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THE-sSTOEY-OF 

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FAMOUS AMERICANS 
FOR YOUNG READERS 

Titles Ready 

GEORGE WASHINGTON By Joseph Walker 
JOHN PAUL JONES By C. C. Fraser 

THOMAS JEFFERSON By Gene Stone 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN By J. Walker McSpadden 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN By Clare Tree Major 
DAVID CROCKETT By Jane Corby 

ROBERT FULTON By I. N. McFee 

THOMAS A. EDISON By I. N. McFee 
HARRIET B. STOWE By R. B. MacArthur 
MARY LYON By H. O. Stengel 

Other Titles in Preparation 



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FAMOUS AMERICANS 

FoiO^ 01 ^ Reader 



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* 

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* 

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THE->STOEY-OF 

BY 
RUTH BROWN MvcARTHUR 




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RAKSB <& HOPKINS 

NEWVDI^C NEWARK 



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Copyright, 1922 
BY BARSE & HOPKINS 



m -2 1922 

©CI.A677737 

Ttar.l. 



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PREFACE 

A hundred years ago, a large family of boys 
and girls came to gladden a Connecticut home. 
Two out of the dozen were to come to world- 
wide fame — Henry Ward Beecher, one of the 
greatest of pulpit orators, and his sister Har- 
riet, author of an epoch-making book. 
Harriet's early life was in no sense remark- 
able; she was happy and care-free, and al- 
though she married a man who had no worldly 
goods, she did her share as a provider. The 
author of several books and many short stories, 
her chief fame to-day rests as author of "Uncle 
Tom's Cabin." When issued in book form, 
more than half a million copies were sold 
within five years — a tremendous sale for those 
days. Everybody read the book and either 
praised or condemned it, according to whether 
they lived North or South. Its terrific ar- 
raignment of slavery did no little to hasten 
the Civil War. "So you are the little lady 
who started the War!" remarked Lincoln to 
Mrs. Stowe, when he first met her. 

This story of her life is unexpectedly rich 
in dramatic incident. But she never posed as 
a "lion." Mrs. Stowe was a very human and 
very friendly sort of person, whom to know 
even at second-hand is to admire. 



PREFACE 

The material used in this manuscript was 
gathered chiefly from "Life and Letters of 
Harriet Beecher Stowe," by Annie Fields; 
"Harriet Beecher Stowe," by Chas. E. Stowe 
and Lyman Beecher Stowe; and "Harriet 
Beecher Stowe, a Biography for Girls," by 
Martha Foote Crow; together with miscella- 
neous sources; to all of which the author de- 
sires to express appreciation. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. As a Child 9 

II. As a Student 42 

III. As a Reader of Books .... 52 

IV. As a Teacher 63 

V. As Wife and Mother .... 82 

VI. As a Writer 99 

VII. As Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 113 

VIII. As a Famous Woman .... 128 

IX. As a Patriot 143 

X. As a Friend of the Freedman . 154 

XL As a Writer of New England 

Stories 161 

XII. As a Friend 167 

XIII. As the Sun Set ..... . 175 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Harriet Beecher Stowe .... Frontispiece 
From a portrait from life 

FACING PAGE 

Lyman Beecher 22 

Father of Harriet Beecher Stowe 

Harriet Beecher 100 

Portrait made before her marriage to 
Mr. Stowe 

Henry Ward Beecher 168 

Famous preacher; brother of 
Harriet Beecher Stowe 



THE STORY OF HARRIET 
BEECHER STOWE 



AS A CHILD 

"Children, who do you suppose came to 
live with us last night?" The proud father's 
face shone happily as he asked this question of 
a band of bright-eyed girls and boys gathered 
around the breakfast table that bright June 
morning. 

"Who?" they instantly demanded with 
youthful eagerness, pausing with forks or 
spoons uplifted as they waited for his answer. 

"A baby girl!" 

"Hurrah! What is her name?" they chor- 
used, and immediately everyone had some sug- 
gestion to offer for the naming of the wee one 
just come to join their number and be one of 
them. 

In some such manner was the birth of Har- 
riet Elizabeth Beecher announced to her 
brothers and sisters, for she was sixth child in 

9 



10 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

this lively household where children were al- 
ways welcomed with warm hearts and childish 
devotion. "The more the merrier," seemed to 
be their motto. At least, the family circle con- 
tinued to grow until there were thirteen chil- 
dren, eleven of whom grew to manhood and 
womanhood. 

The father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, was a Pres- 
byterian minister, who, at the time Harriet was 
born, was living in the beautiful town of Litch- 
field, Connecticut. The parsonage was a huge, 
rambling affair, which had grown with the 
family. The original house was a square 
building with a great brick chimney in the mid- 
dle of it ; but as the family needs had increased, 
several bedrooms, a new kitchen, a sinkroom, 
a woodshed, a carriage house, and other out- 
buildings had been added one by one, until 
someone had suggested that it seemed as if the 
house had been constructed on the model of a 
telescope. Besides all these rooms in which 
the family lived, there were several cellars 
where the autumn harvests were stored for 
winter use, and four great garrets to add to 
the charm of the place ; and as Harriet grew 
up she loved them all, from the damp, dark 



HARRIET B. STOWE 11 

vegetable cellar with its earthy smell, to the 
attic where many barrels of old sermons were 
kept, and in which she revelled to her heart's 
content. 

The Beecher family was an old one, rich in 
intellect and achievement, makers of history 
both in the Old World and in the New. Eigh- 
teen years after the first Pilgrims had landed 
from the Mayflower on the rugged shores of 
our beloved America, a company of rich and 
cultured men and women under the guidance 
of a London clergyman named Davenport, 
came to the same part of the country with the 
intention of founding a new colony. Among 
this band were John Beecher and his mother. 
His father had been promised land in this coun- 
try if he would join the colony, but he died 
just before the venturesome band left old Eng- 
land. However, Mrs. Beecher had proved 
herself so useful to the company, that she was 
given a large tract of land near New Haven, 
where they set up their home, and here the first 
religious services of the new colony were held. 
This is an interesting fact when we remember 
that Lyman Beecher and six of his sons were 
ministers of the Gospel years later. 



12 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Lyman Beecher himself was an only child. 
His mother died of consumption two days after 
he was horn, and so puny and frail was he at 
birth that the neighbors who cared for his 
mother decided he could not live, and actually 
wrapped him up and laid him aside as not 
worth dressing. Later, some curious soul in- 
vestigated the little bundle and discovered that 
the babe still breathed, so he was taken care of 
and given a chance to live. As he says in his 
"Autobiography," "It was by a hair's breadth 
I got a foothold in this world." Although his 
father married again and had several children 
by his second wife, Lyman Beecher was 
brought up in his uncle's family, at Guilford, 
Connecticut, went to college, earning most of 
the necessary money himself, and married 
Roxana Foote while still very young. Eight 
children were born of this union, Catherine, 
William Henry, Edward, Mary Foote, 
George, Harriet Elizabeth, Henry Ward and 
Charles, of whom, as stated before, Harriet 
was the sixth. Harriet's birthday was June 
14, 1811. After her came her famous brother, 
Henry Ward, her inseparable companion, and 
a brother Charles. When her mother died of 



HARRIET B. STOWE 13 

that same dread disease, consumption, Harriet 
was but five years old, so her memories of her 
mother were not many, yet there was a subtle 
bond between the two which influenced all 
Harriet's life, and is revealed in nearly every- 
thing she wrote. 

Mrs. Beecher was a calm, restful, sympa- 
thetic person, whose temper never seemed to 
get ruffled, no matter what emergency might 
arise, so the discipline of the large family of 
children was left to the father, whose punish- 
ments, though few, were so severe and unique 
that they were never forgotten by the culprits, 
and all it required to gain immediate and ex- 
plicit obedience from any of the children was 
his command, "Mind your mother! Quick! 
No crying! Look pleasant!" Yet they re- 
membered him as their playfellow, not as a 
disciplinarian. He believed thoroughly in 
playtime, and when long or hard tasks were 
well done, often rewarded the small workers 
with a fishing trip or a nut-gathering, accord- 
ing to the season of the year. Huge baskets 
were filled with a substantial lunch for the 
hearty appetites, and the pleasure seekers 
tramped happily away at daybreak for a holi- 



14 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

day that often lasted till after dark. Harriet 
writes of the fishing excursions particularly, 
for she was not included in the merrymaking 
until she was quite a girl, and the days seemed 
so lonely and long-drawn-out with all the 
noisy brothers away that she scarcely knew 
what to do with herself till bedtime came. 

When they went nutting, Dr. Beecher 
would choose the tallest trees himself to shake 
for the ripening nuts, and in one well-remem- 
bered spot he frequently climbed a tree that 
leaned far out over a deep gully in order to 
gather some specially fine nuts. But he would 
not permit any of the boys to take the same 
risk. 

He possessed a stimulating personality that 
always brought forth the best efforts of his 
large brood in whatever tasks they undertook, 
and he tried to make these tasks so interesting 
that no one would want to shirk. When the 
tedious apple-cutting or wood-splitting events 
occurred, as they did each year, he marshaled 
his forces with contagious enthusiasm and they 
all set to work with a royal will. If the tasks 
were indoors, one of the company would read 
Scott's novels or some other interesting book, 



HARRIET B. STOWE 15 

while the rest busied themselves with their 
hands, and the long evenings slipped by so 
rapidly that no one could believe bedtime was 
at hand when the old clock struck the hour. 
Of course when the great piles of oak and 
hickory logs were to be sawed and split, such 
a quiet program was impossible. But even 
then they strengthened their minds debating 
some topic suggested by the father, possibly, 
and often he would purposely take the wrong 
side of a question in order to create a lively 
argument. If the children did not make the 
most of the points in their favor, he would call 
attention to the arguments they had over- 
looked, and say, "Now, if you had argued in 
this way, you could have tripped me up." 
Thus he developed their reasoning powers to 
an unusual degree, making strong speakers of 
all his children, and in this manner fitting them 
to become the powerful preachers which six of 
them afterward became. 

He was very fond of music, and when some 
lucky accident made it possible for him to 
bring home from New Haven a fine, upright 
piano, the joy of the household knew no 
bounds. The house must have fairly rung 



16 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

with music at times, for Catherine and Harriet 
learned to play the magical instrument, their 
father was a devotee of the violin all his life, 
and the two oldest boys could perform on the 
flute ; so they had quite a respectable orchestra 
under their own roof. 

Unfortunately, few memories of her mother 
lingered to comfort her when the dear figure 
was gone from the home nest. Two incidents, 
however, impressed themselves so vividly upon 
her mind that she could never forget them, and 
they are good examples of how this unusual 
woman governed her boisterous brood. One 
Sunday morning, Harriet, with some of her 
younger brothers, danced noisily out of the 
nursery to meet the mother as she was passing, 
and she rebuked them with the gentle admoni- 
tion, " 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it 
holy.' " 

Another time while Mrs. Beecher was 
gone from the nursery for some minutes, Har- 
riet unearthed a bag of tulip bulbs which their 
uncle John had sent his sister, knowing her 
love of flowers ; and the child, mistaking them 
for onions, which she had never tasted, per- 
suaded her brothers to help her eat them up. 



HARRIET B. STOWE IT 

When they were entirely devoured, the mother 
returned, and the children ran to tell her of 
their discovery and of the feast that had fol- 
lowed. Poor Mrs. Beecher must have been 
greatly disappointed over the loss of the bulbs, 
but instead of chiding them for their action, 
or even frowning her displeasure, she merely 
explained the nature of the bulbs they had 
eaten, and told them that now it would be im- 
possible to have the red and yellow blossoms 
in the garden when spring came around. The 
children were much crestfallen and more pun- 
ished than if they had been severely repri- 
manded. 

The mother was a very talented person her- 
self, being quite a musician, and an artist of 
considerable ability. She painted twenty-four 
miniatures of her friends on ivory before her 
marriage, and it is said that the likenesses were 
very good. She also had a positive genius for 
home-making, which was very fortunate in- 
deed, being the wife of a minister, and the 
mother of so large a family. She was well- 
read, spoke French fluently, made bobbin lace 
and cobweb stitch such as is never seen any 
more, and her needlework was truly marvelous 



18 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

for its delicacy. When problems of any sort 
arose in her domestic duties, she promptly 
went to the encyclopaedia for advice and stud- 
ied until she had solved the difficulty. With 
the aid of a mason, she built for her own use a 
Russian stove, according to a description she 
had seen in an encyclopaedia, which was so suc- 
cessful that it warmed six rooms on less fuel 
than it took for a single fire in the open fire- 
places. She even made a carpet for her par- 
lor floor when such things were unknown in 
her circle, because Dr. Beecher had brought 
home a bale of cotton from one of his lecture 
tours, and she could think of no other use to 
put it to. 

So she carded, spun, wove and cut it to 
fit the best room, and stretching it on the 
garret floor, she brushed it with a thin paste 
to give it body. Then she painted a design of 
flowers and leaves on the surface, taking for 
her patterns the plants of her own garden. 
When finished it was the envy and admiration 
of all who saw it, and the church deacons, 
when they came to call, were afraid to step on 
it. Indeed, they chided Mrs. Beecher for try- 
ing to make the house so splendid that Heaven 



HARRIET B. STOWE 19 

would lose its attractiveness! But perhaps 
they were excusable, for at that time the only 
decorations on parlor floors were made by sift- 
ing clean sand over them and marking them 
off in patterns. 

With such a father and mother, it is scarcely 
to be wondered at that Harriet developed into 
the genius she afterward became. But she 
did not inherit all the talent in the family. 
There were gifted brothers and sisters, as well. 
Catherine, the oldest girl, was her father's 
favorite, and in her earlier years was regarded 
as the most promising of his daughters. She, 
like her mother, could do almost anything her 
mind set itself to, and she wrote many books 
on various subjects, as well as being one of the 
best-known women educators of her day. Six 
of the brothers grew up as foremost preachers 
of that period, and foremost of the six was 
Henry Ward, Harriet's favorite brother. 

There were good times aplenty in the 
Beecher home while the children were growing 
up, although there were few toys or story 
books for their amusement. That was an age 
when children were seen and not heard, and the 
world seemed made just for grown-ups. To be 



20 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

sure, the lack of toys was not greatly felt, for 
all the little Beechers possessed vivid imagina- 
tions and could readily think up new games 
when the old ones palled. Catherine seems to 
have been particularly gifted along that line, 
and the younger sisters never lacked for rag 
dolls with real, painted faces, so long as she was 
at home to make and dress them for the others. 
Indeed, most of their crude toys were the 
product of this oldest sister's brain and the 
work of her nimble fingers. Much to the 
amusement of her father, she once made a 
Queen of Sheba sitting in a pumpkin chariot 
which was drawn by four prancing steeds, 
made of crook-neck squashes, with ears and 
legs whittled out of wood. Harriet's delight 
in this contraption knew no bounds, and even 
the brothers were interested. Catherine cele- 
brated most of the household mishaps in 
rhyme — nonsense, Dr. Beecher called it, yet 
it so amused him that he sometimes contributed 
to the cause himself. On one occasion, when 
one of the many parsonage cats had died, Har- 
riet begged this big sister for an "epithet," 
meaning an epitaph for its' tombstone, and 
Catherine wrote this touching ditty: 



HARRIET B. STOWE 21 

"Here died our kit 
Who had a fit, 

And acted queer. 
Shot with a gun, 
Her race is run, 

And she lies here." 



All the Beechers were out-of-door people, 
and when the weather permitted, the children 
almost lived in the open air, which accounts in 
a large measure for the robust constitutions 
they possessed in their youth. Dr. Beeeher's 
salary was paid partly in money, partly in 
provisions and partly in firewood, and the 
huge wood-piles that always had a place in the 
back yard of the parsonage afforded Harriet 
and the rest an ever-fascinating playground. 

In summer there were the gardens to add 
to her enjoyment also, and no doubt she 
helped plant the cucumber patch, which always 
grew where the winter's logs had been piled, 
so each spring the ground must be cleared of 
chips before the seed could be sowed. She 
was an eager little worker, and just a remark 
from her father that she should have been a 
boy so she could do as much work as her 
brothers would stimulate her to arduous efforts 



22 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

in clearing this particular spot. But naturally 
she liked the flower gardens better, and took 
great pleasure in watching and tending the 
little plot of ground where the hollyhocks and 
marigolds grew in rich profusion of color. 
The summer months with their warm days and 
gentle showers were very pleasant, but winter 
had its charms, too, for when the north winds 
blew and blizzards raged, the older boys made 
some rough sleds out of whatever materials 
were at hand, and many a cold morning Har- 
riet and the younger brothers were hauled to 
school through the snow when it was too deep 
for their short legs to wade through. 

Day began in the Beecher household at four 
o'clock in the morning. Harriet was usually 
awakened by a lighted candle set inside the 
door of her room. There were no fires to warm 
the sleeping chambers, and no matter how cold 
it was she must crawl out of bed and dress her- 
self in the icy room, with fingers that often 
grew too numb to find the buttons; and then 
help the younger ones who could not dress 
themselves. Breakfast followed — not such a 
breakfast as we would expect to-day, for white 
bread was unknown then, and a heavy, hard 




LYMAN BEECHER 
Father of Harriet Beecher Stowe 



HARRIET B. STOWE 23 

loaf of rye and Indian meal furnished the staff 
of life for them. However, Harriet wrote in 
later years that this kind of bread tasted very 
good, served as it was, smoking hot, with saus- 
age and pork and beans. Family prayers fol- 
lowed breakfast, and every member of the 
household took part. So impressive were these 
brief morning services that they were never 
forgotten by any of them. 

Next came the packing of lunches and get- 
ting the children ready for school, quite a task 
when there were seven or eight to look after, 
for each child carried a small basket, filled with 
slices of brownbread and rosy apples, with 
which to appease the hearty appetites during 
the brief nooning. School kept until late in 
the afternoon, and by the time the evening 
chores were done it was supper time. The long 
evenings were given over to family discussions, 
preparing the next day's lessons, or household 
tasks that all could engage in. Then family 
prayers were held again, and good-nights were 
spoken. 

There were fewer holidays then than now, 
and those few were celebrated in a different 
fashion. There were no Christmas trees with 



24 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

splendid gifts, such as we receive to-day, but 
the occasion was observed rather as a religious 
service, beginning the day with old-fashioned 
Christmas carols. Thanksgiving was a time 
of merrymaking and feasting enjoyed by 
everyone. It had not then become a national 
holiday celebrated annually, but was observed 
by different states at different times, accord- 
ing to different governors' proclamations. 
When Harriet was about nine years old, Dr. 
Beecher wrote to one of his sons in college, 
describing a Thanksgiving just past, in which 
he says, "We had a pleasant Thanksgiving 
dinner, and, they say, a good sermon. We; 
had presents piled up yesterday at a great rate. 
Mr. Henry Wadsworth sent six pounds of but- 
ter, six pounds lard, two pounds Hyson tea, 
five dozen eggs, eight pounds sugar, a large 
pig, a large turkey, and four cheeses. The 
Governor sent a turkey, Mrs. Thompson, 
ditto; and to cap it all, Mr. Rogers sent us 
a turkey!" 

The preparation for this event was almost as 
much fun as the event itself, and the whole 
family took part. For days before the feast, 
the kitchen was full of bustle and commotion, 



HARRIET B. STOWE 25 

while the children stoned raisins, pounded 
spices in the big lignum-vitse mortar, peeled 
apples, picked over cranberries, cracked nuts, 
and sorted fruit and vegetables for the older 
members of the family to mix up in all sorts 
of savory concoctions. When all the family 
were at home, there were thirteen, without 
counting the aunts, who from time to time 
lived with the Beechers, or the other relatives 
who usually helped celebrate the holidays with 
them ; and we can imagine how the great house 
must have resounded with their mirth and 
ijoUity. After the Thanksgiving dinner had 
been eaten, Dr. Beecher always preached a 
little sermon to his own household, recounting 
the many blessings that had come to them dur- 
ing the year and exhorting them to be good. 
Then the whole family joined in singing some 
hymn of praise, and the feast was over until 
another year. 

But the holiday that probably was looked 
forward to with the most anticipation by the 
children, at least, was the wood-spell, so called 
because on this occasion, the members of Dr. 
Beecher's church brought their contributions 
of firewood to the parsonage. This event, 



26 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

therefore, had to take place after heavy snows 
had fallen, so the great, awkward-looking 
pimgs could haul their heavy loads easily; and 
cords and cords of oak, hickory, birch and pine 
were dumped into the preacher's dooryard be- 
fore the eventful day was over. The winter 
following the death of Mrs. Beecher, possibly 
to show their sympathy for their pastor in his 
bereavement, the people brought unusually 
large donations; and Catherine, then but six- 
teen years old, prepared the feast with which 
the farmers regaled themselves before return- 
ing to their own homes. 

All of this kindness meant the frying of 
untold dozens of doughnuts and the baking 
of countless loaves and cakes. Baking pow- 
der and compressed yeast were unheard of 
at that time, and Catherine had to make the 
preparation for raising her cakes by putting 
certain ingredients together ixx covered jars, 
and setting them close to the fire so the heat 
would cause fermentation. So for several days 
before she could begin her baking, rows of 
earthen jars almost surrounded the great fire- 
place, because it would require such large 
quantities of this sour sponge or home-made 



HARRIET B. STOWE 27 

yeast. But the young cook was triumphant, 
and both cakes and doughnuts were voted a 
great success by her hungry guests. Cider and 
cheese completed the refreshments, and the 
day was a gala event for all concerned. The 
Academy closed in order that the teacher 
might be present to help entertain the farmers 
with stories, and all the children were allowed 
to remain at home. Not until the sun was 
setting in the west did the last of the sleds de- 
part, while the children perched triumphantly 
on the great stacks of wood in the back yard, 
waving their hands and screaming loud fare- 
wells to the drivers. 

Thus far, we have said little about the town 
in which Harriet was born; but it, of itself, 
was a constant inspiration to the imaginative 
child, nestling among the beautiful Connecti- 
cut hills with wonderful, enchanted forests on 
all sides, and the river and lakes gleaming in 
the distance. The wild beauty of the place 
held the child enthralled even before she could 
tell what it was that seemed so beautiful about 
her surroundings, and she afterwards described 
the hours she sat on the rough granite steps at 
the front of the rambling old parsonage and 



28 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

gazed at the landscape with loving eyes, or 
watched the glorious sunsets fade into the pur- 
ple twilights, too deeply moved for words. 
Old Mount Tom with its round, blue head, the 
Great and Little Ponds, curtained by steel- 
blue pines, Prospect Hill with its smooth, 
grassy, inviting slopes, and Chestnut Hill, 
thickly wooded with chestnut and hickory trees, 
were very dear to her heart, and when the 
Beechers moved to Hartford, Harriet felt that 
no other home would ever be quite so well 
beloved as the lovely town of Litchfield. 

It also had an historical setting that must 
have filled the growing girl's heart with intense 
patriotism, for during the Revolutionary War 
this town had been a place of great activity. 
It lay along the state road connecting Boston, 
West Point and New York, and many an ex- 
citing incident of this struggle for liberty took 
place within or close to its borders. At one 
time there were only eight men left in Litch- 
field, and these were all too old or feeble to 
fight. All the able-bodied men had responded 
to the call to arms. But the men were not the 
only patriots in this patriotic town. It is said 
that when the leaden statue of King George 



HARRIET B. STOWE 29 

was thrown from its pedestal in New York 
City, the pieces were gathered up and taken 
to the military storehouses in Litchfield, where 
they remained hidden until the ammunition 
of the American Army ran low. Then the 
women of Litchfield melted the great lumps 
of the broken statue and made bullets for their 
men to fire. 

At different times during the course of the 
war General Washington, Lafayette, Rocham- 
beau, and many other officers of the army vis- 
ited the town, and one of the chief heroes of 
the time afterward became a parishioner of 
Dr. Beecher. So Harriet must have heard 
many stories of those stirring times, for she 
was born less than thirty-five years after the 
American colonies had won their independence 
and had set up a government of their own. 
Thus she lived during the infancy of our na- 
tion and became a staunch patriot, interested 
in every movement for the betterment of her 
government. 

When Mrs. Beecher died, the aunt for 
whom Harriet was named, Harriet Foote, 
was living with the family, and after the fu- 
neral she took the child home to Nutplains for 



30 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

a long visit. Here Harriet heard many tales 
of her own dear mother, saw her paintings and 
examined her needlework, for Harriet Foote 
had a great propensity for treasuring family 
relics, and had great drawers and cabinets 
filled with things that had belonged to friends 
or relatives, and were prized accordingly. 
Here the child also saw wonderful treasures 
of foreign countries brought home by her Un- 
cle Samuel Foote, and listened to the tales of 
adventure he told of his trips around the world, 
for he was a sea-captain, and had visited many 
quaint and little-heard-of places in his travels. 
The bed in which she slept was hung with 
draperies adorned with Chinese mandarins, 
quaint summer houses decorated with bells that 
never rang, and birds larger than the pictured 
people, all of which made impressions never 
to be forgotten by the sensitive, romantic child. 
The Footes were Episcopalians and followed 
the customs of that church very strictly; so 
Harriet became as familiar with its teachings 
as with those of her father's faith, and, in fact, 
learned both catechisms, for after her Aunt 
Harriet had taught her the daily portion of 
the Church catechism, she evidently thought it 



HARRIET B. STOWE 31 

her duty to teach her the Primer of the Pres- 
byterian Church as well, much to Harriet's dis- 
may, although she was too well-bred to rebel. 
Besides this, she also learned twenty-seven 
hymns and two chapters of the Bible one sum- 
mer while she was visiting Nutplains as a small 
child. 

She stood somewhat in awe of her Aunt 
Harriet, who was a strict disciplinarian, but 
between her and Grandmother Foote there ex- 
isted a very tender bond of sympathy, although 
this dearly beloved soul was in her secret heart 
a Tory, and Harriet was the staunchest of 
patriots. The grandmother made no outward 
demonstrations of her beliefs, but confided in 
Harriet her grief that the prayers for the king 
and queen and royal family had ceased to be 
read in church. As for herself, she often 
turned to those particular passages in her 
prayer book and read them aloud in a voice 
that trembled with emotion, for she always felt 
that there must have been some other way of 
settling the dispute which led to American in- 
dependence. 

She was a strong character with a clear, 
active mind, fond of reading and always busy 



32 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

at something. She liked to have her grand- 
children read to her from the Bible, and gave 
them many explanations which made certain 
passages very plain to their youthful minds. 
But it always troubled her when any of them 
got into a controversy over religion, as they 
were sure to do whenever they visited Nut- 
plains, because their Uncle George and Aunt 
Harriet were such firm believers in the Epis- 
copalian doctrines, and the young Beechers 
were equally firm believers in the views their 
father held and expounded from his pulpit. 
These discussions were always friendly af- 
fairs, but oftentimes in the heat of argument 
the voices would be raised unnecessarily loud, 
and the deaf grandmother, watching their im- 
passioned gestures, feared that a real quarrel 
was imminent. The place was rather lonely 
for a child, but the atmosphere of the home 
was so cordial and cheerful that the hours Har- 
riet spent there were golden memories to her, 
and she welcomed every chance she got to visit 
Nutplains, her mother's former home. 

When Harriet was between six and seven 
years old, her father took one of his customary 



HARRIET B. STOWE 3a 

journeys, to preach or lecture in a neighboring 
town, and went to Portland, Maine, where he 
married Harriet Porter, a woman of good fam- 
ily and remarkable intelligence. They re- 
turned to Litchfield one night after the chil- 
dren were in bed. Harriet was roused from 
her dreams by an unusual stir about the house, 
and sitting up in her bed, she saw her father 
standing in the door of the nursery where she 
slept with her two younger brothers. "Why, 
here is Pa!" she cried in surprise. A voice 
from behind him echoed, "And here is Ma!" 
There before their wondering eyes stood a 
beautiful lady with lovely blue eyes and auburn 
hair, who bent over them eagerly and kissed 
them, telling them that she loved little chil- 
dren and had come to be their mother. They 
immediately demanded to be dressed, but were 
persuaded to wait until morning, as this new 
mother had come to stay. No stepmother ever 
made a sweeter impression on the children she 
had come to mother, and though they felt some 
awe of her at first because of her dainty ele- 
gance and unusual grace and beauty, they 
learned to love her dearly, and she returned 



34 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

the feeling with her whole heart. In a letter 
she wrote shortly after her arrival as mistress 
of the Beecher home, she describes each mem- 
ber of the lively brood with appreciative words, 
closing with the lines, "Harriet and Henry 
come next, and they are always hand in hand. 
They are as lovely children as I ever saw; 
amiable, affectionate, and very bright.'' 

Among the impressions of Harriet's child- 
hood, one of the most vivid was of her father's 
study. It was in one of the four great attics, 
in order that the noise of the household should 
not disturb his meditations. Here Harriet 
loved to browse among the books that lined 
the walls, or sit and watch her father at work 
on his sermons, sometimes speaking to himself 
in a loud whisper as he studied. To her, this 
retreat seemed like holy ground, and it must 
have been a solemn place, for she was never 
allowed to disturb her father by a question or 
a remark. The books on the shelves were like 
Greek to her, for she could not understand the 
deep theology expounded in their pages; but 
one day Dr. Beecher brought home Cotton 
Mather's "Magnalia," in two volumes, and 
Harriet was overjoyed to have such wonderful 



HARRIET B. STOWE 35 

stories of her own country to read, although 
it is very doubtful if boys and girls of to-day 
would find them very interesting. 

But she had no access to public libraries, as 
we have, and indeed there were very few chil- 
dren's books written at that time. So she was 
glad to find anything to read, and when in 
rummaging through some barrels of old ser- 
mons in the garret one day she unearthed tat- 
tered copies of "The Tempest" and "Arabian 
Nights," her delight knew no bounds. After 
that she did not care how often the boys went 
fishing without her, for curled up in a corner 
with one of these books in her hands she was 
soon lost to the world, living the scenes her- 
self that the stories depicted. Of course, she 
was familiar with "Pilgrim's Progress," too, 
reading it over and over again until she knew 
it almost by heart. The passage describing 
the dwelling place of the tormented made a 
great impression on her, for in childish curios- 
ity she had one day opened the glistening, 
creosote-incrusted door of the smokehouse, 
built into the kitchen chimney, and the rum- 
bling noises within, as well as the biting, stran- 
gling smoke that issued from the black pit 



36 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

below reminded her of Bunyan's vivid descrip- 
tion, and she fled from the place in terror. 

Another childhood memory of this old par- 
sonage which had a lasting effect on her sensi- 
tive nature was of the rats in the old walls. 
The Beecher cats and dogs did not seem able 
to exterminate them, and traps failed to di- 
minish their number, so they flourished and 
grew fat and raised large f amilies of little rats 
to take their places when they should die of 
old age. In the daytime they stayed strictly 
at home, but when the darkness of night set- 
tled over the old house, they scuttled out of 
their holes, and srcambled and squealed and 
fought so madly through the partitions and 
across the attic floors above Harriet's head, 
that she used to cower and quake under the 
bedclothes, expecting any moment to see them 
burst through the walls and pounce upon her. 

Sometimes the racket they made was terrific 
as they rolled ears of corn over the rough 
boards and down into their nests between the 
beams; and when the winter winds bellowed 
about the old house, whistling around the cor- 
ners, roaring down the chimneys, rattling the 
windows, and banging the doors, the revels of 



HARRIET B. STOWE 37 

the rats grew so loud and hideous that the 
frightened child could scarcely sleep at all. 
But they never did get a hole gnawed through 
the wainscoting while the Beechers lived there, 
and in after years Harriet could laugh at the 
frights they used to give her. 

The meeting-house, in the middle of the vil- 
lage green, where her father preached, of 
course, was never forgotten. She thought its 
architecture resembled Noah's Ark and Solo- 
mon's Temple combined, as pictured in her 
catechism. It had a double row of windows, 
which she counted over and over until she 
knew exactly how many there were and where 
they were placed. It had great, wooden curls 
over the doors, a belfry on the east end, and a 
steeple with a bell. The turnip-like canopy 
that hung over the preacher's head in the pul- 
pit, suspended by a long iron rod to the ceil- 
ing above, seemed very magnificent to Har- 
riet's eyes, but she could not help wondering 
what would happen to that august personage 
if the canopy ever should fall. The singing 
of the choir also caused her a great deal of 
wonder, for each of the four different parts 
of the choir sang a different set of words, and 



38 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Harriet felt sure each time they attempted a 
selection that they would lose themselves in the 
medley, and when they did triumphantly reach 
the end of the piece in perfect harmony, she 
never ceased to feel an amazed delight over 
the feat they had accomplished. 

Sunday mornings after the several little 
Beechers had donned their best clothes and had 
recited their catechisms, they wended their way 
soberly to the meeting-house, where they must 
sit through long hours of sermons on a low 
seat in front of the pulpit. They found the 
time dragged heavily when they were too small 
to understand what the minister was talking 
about, and sometimes tried to amuse them- 
selves by making rabbits out of their hand- 
kerchiefs, or nibbling at a bit of gingerbread 
or an apple which they had hidden in their 
pockets, but woe to them if the deacon caught 
them at it ! 

Although Dr. Beecher insisted that his chil- 
dren be in their seats when the old steeple bell 
pealed out its Sabbath summons, he himself 
caused his wife much anxiety by one peculiar 
habit of his. Every Sunday morning he 
roamed about the house, chatting amiably with 



HARRIET B. STOWE 39 

various members of his family, apparently 
without a care in the world, until nearly time 
to start for meeting. Then suddenly he would 
rush away to his study in the attic, frantically 
begin writing notes for the sermon he was 
about to preach, and remain in this seclusion 
until the hour for the service was at hand. 

Poor Mrs. Beecher would wait for him 
apprehensively while the minutes flew rapidly 
by, till just when she had decided he could not 
possibly reach his charge on time, he would 
rush out from his retreat again with his cravat 
tied under one ear or with a button conspicu- 
ously off his coat, and seizing his wife or daugh- 
ter by the arm, much as he would grab a hand 
satchel, he would hurry away to the meeting- 
house, hardly allowing his family time to make 
him presentable. After a mad race through 
the quiet Sunday streets, they would arrive 
at the church panting and breathless, but tri- 
umphant, just as the last peal of the bell 
sounded; and the smiling doctor of divinity 
would push his way through the crowded aisles 
to the pulpit as if he enjoyed that particular 
part of the program. 

The parishioners came from miles around, 



40 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

and of course their dogs came too, lying very 
quietly in the aisle or under the pews while 
the preaching was in progress. But occasion- 
ally they were not so well behaved. The 
Beechers had a dog named Trip, who, accord- 
ing to Harriet, had a nervous disposition, and 
would snap and snarl at the bothersome flies 
which interrupted his Sabbath meditations, and 
this annoyed the sober elderly folk of the con- 
gregation. Sometimes he even howled out loud 
in a nightmare, and this sort of thing could 
not be tolerated, so the animal was shut up 
on Sunday before the family went to meeting, 
in order to keep him from attending also. But 
often he would manage to break out of prison, 
and sneak up the aisle to his position right in 
front of the pulpit after the morning service 
had begun, so he could not be removed without 
too much commotion. 

Harriet tells of one memorable occasion, 
when Dr. Beecher exchanged pulpits with a 
neighboring preacher, a thin, wiry little man, 
given to wearing many buckles about his cloth- 
ing, and being afflicted with a comically high, 
cracked voice which made the children stare 
and giggle whenever he spoke. On that par- 



HARRIET B. STOWE 41 

ticular morning, the young Beechers were in 
rather a hilarious mood when they set out 
for church, and Trip somehow managed to fol- 
low them, taking his place just as the bell 
ceased its compelling summons. He looked 
very meek and innocent, but the minute the 
strange preacher rose in the pulpit, Trip also 
rose, alert and attentive. The minister began 
to read the hymn according to the custom: 

" 'Sing to the Lord aloud/ " 

At the sound of the queer, squeaking voice, the 
surprised dog burst into a dismal howl. But 
the visiting divine was not dismayed, and is- 
sued instructions for the removal of the dog 
in the same tone in which he read the hymn, 
so to the spirited children it sounded like this : 

" 'Sing to the Lord aloud,' (Please put that dog 
out) 
'And make a joyful noise.' " 

This the children proceeded to do, laughing 
unrestrainedly, but fortunately the choir had 
taken up the words of the hymn, and their joy- 
ful noise drowned out that of the children. 



II 



AS A STUDENT 



In the center of the town of Litchfield was 
the village green, where the square, old meet- 
ing-house stood. From this green, like the 
spokes of a wheel, radiated four wide, elm- 
bordered streets, called East, West, North and 
South Streets. The parsonage where the 
Beecher family lived was built at the highest 
point of North Street, and about the same dis- 
tance from the green on West Street stood the 
ugly, box-like building where Harriet received 
her first schooling. This was the Dame School, 
and in Harriet's day was conducted by Ma'am 
Kilbourne, a strict, fussy, disagreeable person 
who seemed to take delight in confusing her 
pupils instead of trying to make their lessons 
clear to their youthful minds. The school- 
house stood in an unf enced, barren waste, with 
neither trees nor flowers to beautify the yard, 



42 



HARRIET B. STOWE 43 

with nothing but a huge pile of wood in front 
of the door in winter, and a scattered pile of 
chips in summer. 

Inside the building it was just as dreary- 
looking. The benches were great rough slabs 
set on legs. The desks were the same, except 
that they were set at an angle. They were cut 
and scratched and disfigured by generations of 
jack-knife engravings, but if Ma'am Kil- 
bourne saw any of her pupils in the act of 
marring these ancient desks, punishment was 
swift and sure. If the stinging ferrule was not 
at hand, her fingers were just as good, and the 
scholar who had once felt the pinch of these 
supple fingers on arm or hand was slow to 
offend again. 

Harriet and Henry Ward attended this 
school together six days of the week, from early 
morning till late afternoon, with but a brief 
intermission at noon for lunch. But on Sat- 
urday the session differed somewhat from the 
program of other days, in that the pupils 
learned to recite the Shorter Catechism, in- 
stead of studying "The New England 
Primer," which taught them to read by means 
of quaint rhymes, such as, 



44 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

"The cat doth play 
And after slay," or 

"Young pious Ruth 
Left all for truth." 



When the lessons were learned sooner than 
the time allotted for them, these little scholars 
brought forth a bit of sewing and busied them- 
selves making neat stitches, in order that no 
precious minutes should be wasted during 
school hours. Even at noon when the lunches 
had been eaten, there were long towels to be 
laboriously hemmed by boys and girls alike, in- 
stead of the games that modern-day school 
children enjoy. Evidently Ma'am Kilbourne 
did not believe in physical exercises of any kind 
for her small charges; at least there was no 
playtime provided for them, and it is no won- 
der they often envied the flies on the window- 
pane because they did not have to go to school. 
When Harriet had mastered the art of reading 
her Primer, she was promoted to reading the 
Bible and the "Columbian Orator," to doing 
sums in "Daboll's Arithmetic," and to writing 
in her copy-books with quill pens. But get- 
ting an education in those days must have been 



HARRIET B. STOWE 45 

a tedious task if all school-teachers were like 
Ma'am Kilbourne. 

After a few years, Harriet entered the 
Litchfield Female Academy, a goal she had 
long been looking forward to with eager heart. 
This Academy was conducted by Miss Sally 
and Miss Mary Pierce, very sensible, charm- 
ing, cultivated ladies. Miss Sally was particu- 
larly well beloved, and probably the Miss Tit- 
comb of Mrs. Stowe's "Oldtown Folks" was 
drawn from her impressions of this teacher. 
The school was held in a small, modest house 
with a closet at each end, one for the piano 
and the other for the pupils' wraps. There 
were the same severely plain desks and 
benches that formed the equipment of all 
schools in that day, and a small table and an 
elevated chair for the teacher. This chair was 
where Miss Sally Pierce, the principal, sat to 
instruct her charges. She was given to ex- 
pressing herself in dignified and rather flowery 
language, which her pupils tried to emulate. 

Her ideal which she held constantly before 
her school was moral perfection. Dr. Beecher 
was much interested in the academy, and made 
it a practice to visit there every Saturday in 



46 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

order to talk with the young ladies about the 
state of their souls. They, in turn, were re- 
quired to attend his church on Sundays and to 
report on the sermons he preached. It was 
the fashion at that time for everyone to keep 
a diary, and some of these records of every- 
day affairs have been saved by relatives of the 
writers, so we can read the entries certain am- 
bitious pupils made regarding Dr. Beecher's 
doctrines, as well as other matters that give 
us an insight into what was expected of school- 
girls of that period. 

Mrs. Beecher was also interested in this 
school, and though unusually retiring and mod- 
est in her manner, so she could not bring her- 
self to speak in public anywhere, she often 
acted on committees for awarding prizes at 
the end of the term. The annual graduation 
exercises took place in June, just as they do 
now, and this event was a very important oc- 
casion for the whole town. The gayly dressed 
girls formed in line and marched down North 
Street to the music of the flute and flageolet 
until they reached the church, where, after 
brief exercises, they received their diplomas, 
stating that they had completed the prescribed 



HARRIET B. STOWE 47 

course of study. This included grammar, 
geography, history, arithmetic, rhetoric, nat- 
ural and moral philosophy, chemistry, logic 
and the principles of taste. The diplomas 
were printed on small squares of white satin 
and bound with blue ribbon. Some of them, 
yellow-stained now and ancient looking, are 
still preserved in the Town Museum of Litch- 
field, but Harriet Beecher's is not there. In 
fact, she probably did not remain in Litchfield 
long enough to earn hers, as she left her birth- 
place to be with her sister Catherine in Hart- 
ford, while she was still a young girl. But 
she thought so much of Miss Pierce's method 
of teaching history that when she had a family 
of little ones of her own, she wrote to her for- 
mer teacher for a copy of the book that she 
herself had studied in her childhood. 

Miss Pierce's school was so successful that it 
finally became necessary to have another assist- 
ant, and her nephew, John Brace, accepted the 
position she offered him. Harriet Beecher was 
greatly impressed with his knowledge of bot- 
any, mineralogy and natural sciences in gen- 
eral, and could not resist listening to the 
recitations of the classes he conducted, when 



48 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

she should have been studying her own lessons. 
She found him a very stimulating and inspir- 
ing instructor, and became so interested in the 
discussions he held with his classes in moral 
philosophy and rhetoric that she could hardly 
wait until she was old enough to write com- 
positions herself. 

He used to divide the school into groups of 
three or four, who took turns in writing each 
week. Besides that, he called for volunteers 
every week and there were always those who re- 
sponded. So when Harriet was but nine years 
old, she volunteered to write a composition 
every week, quite a task for one whose hand- 
writing was hardly formed yet. But this 
amused Mr. Brace, and he instructed her to 
the best of his ability, although the subjects he 
chose for his pupils' essays seem very strange 
indeed. Imagine a child of twelve writing a 
composition on "Can the Immortality of the 
Soul be Proved by the Light of Nature ? H Yet 
this was the title of an essay Harriet wrote, 
which was read as one of the three best at a 
school exhibition that her father attended. Dr. 
Beecher was seated on the platform facing the 
school when the papers were read, and Harriet 



HAHRIET B. STOWE 49 

saw his face brighten with interest, as he leaned 
forward to listen to hers. She says it was the 
proudest moment of her life when he asked 
who wrote that particular essay, and was told 
that it was his own daughter. It was shortly 
after this episode that Harriet was sent to 
Hartford, and she never returned to the Litch- 
field schools again. 

Besides these experiences in public and pri- 
vate schools of that period, Harriet received 
much book knowledge from home instruction, 
when, from time to time her father or step- 
mother acted as teacher of their own children 
and conducted regular lessons at regular hours 
daily. The necessity for this arose, no doubt, 
from the fact that the family moved several 
times to districts where the schools were in- 
ferior or too far away for the children to at- 
tend with any regularity. It is possible also 
that the Doctor's slender salary could not 
cover all the demands made upon it, and it was 
more economical to teach the children at home 
than to send them all to school. 

When but a child herself, Harriet assumed 
the task of teaching her younger brothers, and 
some of her efforts were ludicrous indeed. To 



50 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

mischievous Henry Ward she patiently ex- 
plained his grammar lessons, saying, "Now, 
'his' is a possessive pronoun, and denotes pos- 
session. You would say 'his book/ and not 
'him book. 5 " 

"But why can't I say 'hymn book'?" Henry 
demanded saucily. "We sing out of a hymn 
book at church." 

Another time she told him, " 'A' is an in- 
definite article, used only with a singular 
noun. It is proper to say 'a man,' but never 



amen. 



"Yes it is, too, proper to say 'amen,' " pro- 
tested the roguish little fellow. "We always 
say amen at the end of our prayers." 

What could the youthful teacher do at such 
sallies but laugh, which was just what the small 
boy desired, and the lesson would end for the 
day. 

Nor was book knowledge the only thing 
Harriet gleaned from her home life, for with 
such a remarkable father as head of the house- 
hold, it was impossible for her to escape hear- 
ing the discussions he carried on with his older 
children and with the famous men who sought 
him out because they valued his opinions in all 



HARRIET B. STOWE 51 

matters. Much of these conversations was too 
deep for the child to understand at the time, 
but it had its influence, nevertheless, and as she 
grew in age, her brain developed with great 
rapidity, absorbing all kinds of information 
that proved of great value to her later. 



Ill 

AS A READER OF BOOKS 

Mention has already been made of the lack 
of children's story books when Harriet was a 
small child, and of how she read and re-read 
the few volumes that accidentally fell into her 
eager hands. But it is hard for us, in this age 
of children, to realize how unimportant a part 
children played in the world's affairs a century 
ago. America was very young when Harriet 
Beecher was born. We had no literature of 
our own. Few writers of merit had been pro- 
duced within our borders. The country had 
been too busily engaged in building cities, sur- 
veying the boundaries of its holdings, fighting 
for independence, struggling for recognition 
as a nation, and fashioning its new and untried 
form of government, to pay any attention to 
novels and poetry. In fact, most folks looked 
askance at the idea of a wholesome novel being 
written. Good poetry had made a place for 
itself in the minds of men, but prose had yet to 

52 



HARRIET B. STOWE 53 

prove its worth except as a means for preach- 
ers to preserve their lengthy exhortations in 
book form. Women writers were almost un- 
heard of. Indeed, when a certain German 
professor heard that Catherine Beecher had 
written a splendid argument against Edwards' 
learned work, "The Will/ 5 he raised his hands 
in utter amazement, and cried, "God forgive 
Christopher Columbus for discovering Amer- 
ica !" 

Behold, then, the rapid strides this country 
made in the field of literature during the nine- 
teenth century, producing, as it did, such 
authors and poets as Longfellow, Whittier, 
Holmes, Poe, Lowell, Emerson, Irving, Julia 
Ward Howe, Sarah Orne Jewett, Celia Thax- 
ter, and others. In England and other Euro- 
pean countries, literature had received a like 
impetus. So if Harriet Beecher found little 
to read that was suited to her age as a child, 
she certainly had no reason for complaint as 
she grew in years, and such rich treasures in 
both prose and rhyme sprang into being all 
about her. And this much can be said on the 
other side of the question, also. If there was 
a dearth of good stories for children for this 



54 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

eager child mind a century ago, at least there 
was no silly trash nor Diamond Dick exploits 
to be had by the youth of the land to sear their 
brains and besmirch their souls. The very 
lack of children's literature sent these inquisi- 
tive young folk to the encyclopaedia and dic- 
tionary for amusement as well as for informa- 
tion, and consequently they accumulated a 
wonderful fund of real knowledge that helped 
them in many ways. 

A certain young lady of Litchfield, finding 
it necessary to take a tedious journey — and 
all journeys were tedious in those days, — 
asked Miss Sally Pierce, Principal of the 
Litchfield Female Academy, for a list of suit- 
able books to take with her to occupy her 
thoughts, and Miss Pierce suggested "Wilber- 
force's View," "Memoirs of Miss Susanna 
Anthony," and "Reflections on Death," as 
being both amusing and instructive. She 
might have added "Sir Charles Grandison," 
the one novel of that day which was admitted 
to the best of homes, but this tiresome love 
story of little action or excitement rambled its 
lengthy course through seven thick volumes, 
and it is hardly likely that even the most vora- 



HARRIET B. STOWE 55 

cious reader would want to pack so large a 
set of books about, no matter how long the 
journey. In later years Mrs. Stowe described 
"Sir Charles Grandison" as a "delightful old 
bore." 

Certainly any new book published during 
those barren years was hailed with delight as 
a real friend and discussed at every parlor 
gathering for weeks after its first appearance. 
The Beechers were constantly adding to their 
library in spite of meager finances, and to her 
Uncle Samuel Foote, Harriet owes many a 
precious volume, for he was a great reader 
himself and enjoyed sending boxes of the 
latest publications to his appreciative nieces 
and nephews, who not only read them over 
and over, but memorized whole passages of 
such things as Scott's "Lady of the Lake," 
"Marmion," and "The Lay of the Last Min- 
strel." 

Byron also was at the height of his fame 
during Harriet's girlhood, and exerted so 
powerful an influence over the theological stu- 
dents and the seminary girls that they wore 
the same kind of loosely tied cravat that he 
affected, and allowed themselves to become so 



56 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

thoroughly saturated with his melancholia 
that Dr. Beecher and other noted divines of 
the day felt called upon to preach against his 
harmful influence from their pulpits, although 
Dr. Beecher himself was an ardent admirer 
of this great poet. However, he realized 
Byron's shortcomings, and sincerely mourned 
his untimely death, because the man of such 
great genius should so wastefully misuse his 
life. 

When Harriet was but eleven years of age, 
her Aunt Esther one day loaned her a copy 
of Byron's "Corsair," to keep the restless 
mind occupied for a time, and the child was 
so entranced with the only-half -understood 
lines that she besieged her aunt for explana- 
tions of many phrases contained therein, and 
from that time on, read everything of his that 
she could find. The news of his death was 
like the loss of an intimate friend to the sensi- 
tive, imaginative girl, and she went out on 
Chestnut Hill and lay down among the daisies 
to find a solace for her grief. The Sunday 
following the receipt of this news, Dr. Beecher 
preached a funeral sermon in memory of the 
dead poet, taking for his text, "The name of 



HARRIET B. STOWE 57 

the just is as brightness, but the memory of 
the wicked shall rot." His sermons were gen- 
erally too profound for Harriet to understand, 
but this discourse she never forgot, so clearly 
did her father explain that no matter how tal- 
ented and brilliantly gifted a person might 
be, it was no excuse for being vicious, and 
any writer's works would eventually sink into 
oblivion if he let the impurities of his thoughts 
find expression in words. The sermon was in- 
tended especially for the young people who 
formed the mass of his congregation, as a 
warning against living such a loose life as 
Byron had lived, and Harriet was not the only 
person who long remembered his earnest, vig- 
orous exposition. 

Dr. Beecher was very much opposed to 
novels as a class, and refused to permit his 
children to read such trash ; but he recognized 
the real merits of Scott's works, and even 
bought "Ivanhoe," himself, in order that Har- 
riet and her brothers might have the opportu- 
nity of reading it, which they did seven times in 
one summer. Nor were they content with 
merely reading such books. They must play 
them out, discuss them with their friends, and 



58 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

compare their merits and faults with those of 
other books which they had read. In fact, it 
was an age of amateur dramatization. Schools 
encouraged it, homes fostered it, and even the 
Sunday School, just in its infancy, made use 
of symbolism and moralities. 

In Miss Pierce's school the dramatic ten- 
dency was unusually strong, for the principal 
herself wrote some dramas of no small merit, 
which her pupils presented at the exhibitions 
that marked the annual close of school. Cath- 
erine and Mary Beecher were among her best 
youthful actors, but Harriet seems to have been 
too young for very important parts, though 
we have reason to believe that the oldest sister 
displayed real talent in portraying the parts 
that fell to her lot. Miss Pierce's favorite 
drama was called "Jephthah's Daughter," an 
intensely tragic play based on the Bible story. 
Catherine Beecher took the part of Bethulah, 
Jephthah's wife, and was a great success in 
that role. The play was very realistic and ad- 
hered very closely to the Bible story. The 
actors did not hesitate in their portrayal of 
every historic incident, even to the bringing in 
of Ada, unfortunate daughter of the great 



HARRIET B. STOWE 59 

general, who sacrificed her life because of a 
vow made to the Lord, on a bier, accompanied 
by a procession of weeping damsels and la- 
menting youths. When male characters were 
needed to complete the cast, as in this play, 
students from the Litchfield Academy gladly 
volunteered their services, and were as gladly 
accepted. 

Costumes played an important part in these 
theatricals, and much study was given to the 
subject. The encyclopaedia and dictionary 
were consulted, garrets were ransacked for 
suitable materials, and ancient chests yielded 
up long-hoarded gowns and garments of all 
descriptions, which were painstakingly adapted 
to the needs of the hour. Gilt paper made 
effective helmets, shields and royal crowns ; and 
swords or guns were easily carved out of wood. 
Satisfactory thrones could be made from just 
an armchair, and even a realistic gallows was 
not difficult to arrange, but when it came to 
staging a hanging, which they really attempted 
in the play of Queen Esther, they found it 
necessary to substitute a dog for the victim, as 
no one was willing to take the part of Haman 
on the gallows. 



60 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

However, the Bible did not supply all the 
plots which these ardent young actors chose 
to portray. The pupils of the Litchfield Sem- 
inary analyzed the stories in "Plutarch's 
Lives," for plots, and even dramatized modern 
historical events, such as the battle of Bunker 
Hill, where the cannonading was imitated by 
rolling cannon balls across the floor behind 
scenes, and two lone cannons in the foreground 
served as ample battleground scenery. 

Dr. Beecher raised no objections to these 
simple theatricals as long as they took place 
under the supervision of the Seminary or the 
Academy, but Catherine's ambition soared 
higher than that. She wanted to put on a 
drama all by herself, and lacking any more 
suitable setting, decided to give a play at home. 
She chose one of Miss Edgeworth's stories, 
called, "The Unknown Friend," which had 
characters enough in it to give each Beecher 
child a part of his own. "Variety is the spice 
of life," and this story had enough variety to 
please anyone, for certain passages were writ- 
ten in Welsh, Scotch and Irish dialects, and 
for change of scene, the play took place in a 
palace, on a mountain top, and in a shop, all 



HARRIET B. STOWE 61 

of which could be easily staged with a little 
different arrangement of a few chairs, rugs and 
draperies. 

Secret rehearsals took place very frequently 
for some weeks, and then one evening unex- 
pected guests arrived and kept arriving in such 
numbers, that the doctor and his wife began 
to wonder at the coincidence. But before they 
could voice their suspicions even to each other, 
or could investigate the circumstances, the din- 
ing-room door was suddenly pushed open, and 
the amateur actors began their play with great 
earnestness from the stage set up in the farth- 
est corner of the room. All went well and the 
admiring audience applauded lavishly, while 
the amazed preacher and Mrs. Beecher sat by 
in watchful silence. The little band of per- 
formers at length retired flushed and elated 
by their success, while the guests departed. 
But the next day Catherine was called to her 
father's study and emphatically told that she 
must never again indulge in home theatricals. 

Soon after this, she left Litchfield to study 
in Boston, and the Seminary lost one of its 
most promising actors. Then a few years later 
Harriet also left her home town, and Litch- 



62 



FAMOUS AMERICANS 



field knew them no more. But though Harriet 
ceased to act in such amateur dramatizations, 
they had left their effect ineffaceably upon 
her, and in her secret heart she cherished the 
idea of becoming a writer of drama, an am- 
bition she actually tried to realize while still a 
very young girl, as we shall see. 






IV 

AS A TEACHER 

When Harriet's mother died in 1816, it was 
quite natural that the burden of the household 
should, in a large measure, fall upon the eld- 
est daughter of the family, the talented Cather- 
ine, though she was only sixteen or seventeen 
years of age herself. Nevertheless, she had been 
so well trained by her mother, as well as being 
naturally capable and energetic that she filled 
the vacant place very well indeed until the new 
mother came to guide the riotous band of 
motherless children. Catherine was her father's 
favorite daughter and at that time was consid- 
ered the most talented of the children. Nat- 
urally she had a great influence over the 
sensitive, dreamy Harriet. In fact, the 
younger sister almost worshiped this brilliant, 
sympathetic spirit who was the very life of the 
home for so many years, and no doubt she re- 
ceived much inspiration and help from her. 

63 



64 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Catherine herself was an author of no mean 
reputation, and wrote on a wide range of sub- 
jects from cooking recipes and home economics 
to the most profound philosophy and religious 
discussions. 

When Harriet was about nine years old, 
Catherine went to Boston to study music and 
other subjects preparatory to teaching, and 
after a short time accepted a position as teacher 
in a young ladies' school in New London, Con- 
necticut. Here she became engaged to a 
promising young professor of Yale, by the 
name of Alexander Fisher, a mathematical 
genius. He had made such an enviable record 
as a student that upon his graduation he was 
appointed professor of mathematics and was 
sent abroad by his alma mater to study in his 
chosen field and to purchase books and mathe- 
matical instruments for his department. The 
ship, Albion, of which he was a passenger, was 
wrecked off the coast of Ireland, and only one 
of the passengers reached shore alive. Cather- 
ine Beecher was for a time almost crushed by 
this loss, especially as she was afraid her lover 
was not a Christian man, according to her strict 
views of what that term implied. Nor were 



HARRIET B. STOWE 65 

her doubts entirely dispelled when she went 
to live with his parents for a time. 

However, Catherine was a strong character 
and not finding a satisfactory answer to her 
questions, she resolved not to let her grief 
crush her utterly, and set about to find happi- 
ness in helping others. Being an energetic 
person by nature, she could not sit down and 
fold her hands in idleness, so she turned her 
attention once more toward teaching, and 
wrote to her father for his advice in regard to 
opening a seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, 
similar to the Litchfield Female Academy 
which Harriet was at that time attending. 
Dr. Beecher sanctioned the idea and urged her 
to take steps at once, provided she were 
earnest in her desire to do this thing and will- 
ing to put her whole soul into the project. He 
even went to Hartford himself to see what 
prospect there was for such a school in that 
territory, and, finding people enthusiastic over 
the plan, cooperated with his daughter in get- 
ting the school started. Its first location was 
in an apartment over a harness shop, across 
the street from the famous Christ Church. 
The harness maker advertised his wares by; 



66 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

means of a pair of white, wooden horses, one on 
either side of the entrance, and the memory of 
the Sign of the White Horses lingered with the 
imaginative Harriet throughout her life, for 
she became one of Catherine's first pupils. 

The school opened with an enrollment of but 
twenty-five, but in a few years it had increased 
to several hundred. Catherine herself prepared 
textbooks on chemistry, natural history, and 
logic for the use of her pupils, as well as study- 
ing up very thoroughly on arithmetic, algebra 
and geometry that she might be well qualified 
to teach these subjects. The progress of the 
school was so satisfactory that in the second 
year of its existence, Miss Beecher put up a 
building just for it's use, and it became a full- 
fledged female seminary which was to endure 
for years. 

Harriet was nearly thirteen years of age 
when she entered this seminary as one of its 
first pupils. She boarded in the home of Isaac 
D. Bull, a wholesale druggist of Hartford, and 
his youngest daughter boarded with the 
Beechers in Litchfield, in order that she might 
attend the Litchfield Academy. Harriet had 
a small room that overlooked the Connecticut 



HARRIET B. STOWE 67 

River, the first room she had ever had all by 
herself; and the motherly Mrs. Bull watched 
over her with the tenderest kind of care. The 
oldest daughter of the druggist's family was 
a beautiful soprano singer of note in Hart- 
ford and her three brothers also possessed good 
singing voices, so Harriet received much help- 
ful training in that line during the year she 
lived under their roof. 

The second year several members of the 
Beecher family were living in Hartford, so 
Dr. Beecher's sister Esther came to the city 
to act as housekeeper for them, and Catherine, 
Mary and Harriet, and two of the brothers 
who were attending school there became mem- 
bers of this household. Several of the school- 
teachers boarded with them, too, making a 
large family of grown people with Harriet the 
only girl, and they had some very interesting 
discussions around the table at meal time. All 
these experiences tended to develop and disci- 
pline the girl, and to give her new views of 
life. Now, too, she came to realize one of her 
dearest dreams. She had always longed for 
girl friends her own age, but somehow in 
Litchfield had never found the real chum she 



68 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

sought. Here among Catherine's first pupils, 
however, were two unusually intelligent, lov- 
able girls, who wrote letters of welcome to 
Harriet before she left Litchfield, to which 
Harriet responded very promptly, and this 
was the beginning of lifelong friendships be- 
tween them. One of them, Catherine Cogs- 
well, was the daughter of Hartford's leading 
physician, and so popular a girl among her 
mates that Harriet could receive but a small 
share of her leisure time. Georgiana May, 
the other chum, was of a more retiring nature, 
and being older than Catherine, was less 
sought after by the younger girls, but between 
her and Harriet there sprang up a rare and 
beautiful friendship which grew only stronger 
and deeper with the passing years. 

Yet in spite of the new friends and ex- 
periences, the next few years of Harriet's life 
were probably the most futile and unhappy of 
any period she passed through in her varied 
career, due to her intense emotional nature. 
Brought up in such a strongly religious atmos- 
phere as existed in her father's house, she nat- 
urally was religiously inclined fr4fc*^early 
cnildhood, but at the age of thirteen, whilel 






■ si ■'■•£•■;,#< 




HARRIET B. STOWE 69 

home on a vacation, a sermon of her father's 
on the text, "I call you not servants, but 
friends/' made so strong an appeal to her that 
she surrendered herself completely to the ser- 
vice of the Lord and told her father of her 
decision upon reaching home after the sermon 
and sacramental service were over. The good 
doctor held her in his arms silently for a mo- 
ment, and said simply, "Then has a new flower 
blossomed in the Kingdom this day." 

But, having doubts as to her understanding 
of the step she had just taken, he urged her 
to go to her Hartford pastor and talk the mat- 
ter over with him, which Harriet did upon her 
return to school. In those days great stress 
was laid upon what was called, "being under 
conviction," before a person could become a 
Christian in the opinion of his fellow beings, 
and Harriet's simple statement of her decision 
was most unusual. Even her own sister Cath- 
erine doubted the genuineness of the younger 
sister's conversion, and the well-meaning pas- 
tor of the First Church in Hartford asked her 
such bewiliiejring aiid awe-inspiring question 
concernilig the state bT"frer^&Q|^ that pt&R* 

[arriet was stripped of all the joy she had 





70 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

experienced in deciding to become a Christian, 
and left only with morbid questionings and 
grave doubts to torment her. 

Naturally, a feeling of great depression took 
possession of her. She could not grasp her 
father's philosophy, and his stern, uncompro- 
mising Calvinistic beliefs appalled her. She 
came to think of God as a great Power afar 
off, too omnipotent to be bothered with her 
petty cares and troubled thoughts. The relig- 
ious arguments between Catherine and her 
brother Edward increased her mental distress 
and to make her misery complete, her health 
became seriously impaired, for she was using 
up her physical energy by too long hours in 
the schoolroom and too many tasks out of it. 
Sixteen or eighteen hours a day she worked 
with might and main, with very little physical 
exercise or relaxation, and human nature can- 
not stand such a strain. 

When one pauses to consider that at thir- 
teen years of age this girl was translating Ovid 
into English verse, at fourteen was teaching 
Virgil and rhetoric to students as old or older 
than she herself, besides studying French and 
Italian, drawing and painting, was allowing 



HARRIET B. STOWE 71 

herself only half an hour at mid-day for her 
lunch, was in the habit of snatching a bite of 
supper only when she could find time from her 
other tasks, and was helping her Aunt Esther 
with the housework of the large family, one 
can readily understand why nature rebelled 
and why she grew so depressed mentally. 

In those days, physical culture for the women 
of the family was not regarded as essential. 
Dr. Beecher recognized the necessity of reliev- 
ing his own mental fatigue by indulging in 
physical labor, such as splitting wood and hoe- 
ing in his garden, but the women folk of his 
household were permitted to work early and 
late at tasks that held them indoors most of 
the time and afforded little or no mental re- 
laxation. "All work and no play makes Jack 
a dull boy" also applies to his sister Jill, and 
Harriet suffered the consequences of over- 
work, hard study, and her spiritual struggle 
by permanent injury to her once robust health. 

She tried to express her misgivings to her 
father, but for once he failed to understand 
how serious was her need, although he had 
passed through a similar struggle in his own 
young manhood. She tried to hide her trou- 



72 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

bled condition from her friends, hoping that 
she would soon find the comfort and peace she 
was seeking, and succeeded so well that she 
was often reproved for laughing too much 
when in reality she was f eeling the worst. For- 
tunately she had an older brother who finally 
won her confidence, and was able to untangle 
the snarl of misgivings which had hampered 
her for so long a time. 

When she was sixteen years old, her ill health 
worried Catherine so much that the older sis- 
ter persuaded her to make a visit to Nutplains, 
and the rest, together with regular, wholesome 
meals, peaceful surroundings and a normal 
mode of living did much to build up the tired 
body and over-stimulated brain. Thus she 
gradually worked her way out of the labyrinth 
of doubts and fears that had oppressed her. 
She began to believe that God was not a God 
of wrath, but a God of compassion, and taking 
for her creed, "God is love," she found happi- 
ness and sunshine in life once more by doing 
for others, just as Catherine, in her great sor- 
row, had found peace and resignation by de- 
voting her time and self to those about her. 

Her Uncle Samuel Foote had told her at 



HARRIET B. STOWE 73 

one time of a sun dial he had seen in his travels 
which bore the inscription, "I count the fair 
hours only." This sentiment appealed to her 
so strongly that she determined to make it her 
own motto and to forget the unsatisfactory 
things in life which she did not understand. 
So after four years of struggle and despair, 
she found herself back at the point from which 
she had started, when at thirteen years of age 
she had made her decision to be a Christian girl. 
It was while Harriet was passing through 
this troublesome period that her father ac- 
cepted a call to become pastor of Hanover 
Church in Boston, and the family left Litch- 
field never to return there to live. But Harriet 
found little enjoyment in her Boston home, 
because of the continuous theological discus- 
sions which took place under its roof between 
her father and brothers and visiting preachers. 
However, she was not there a great deal, be- 
cause of her work as teacher in Catherine's 
school at Hartford. In fact, when she was 
but eighteen years old, she took entire charge 
of this school, while Catherine was forced to 
go away in search of health, and during this 
period of great responsibility she instituted a 



74 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

system of self-government among the pupils 
which proved to be as satisfactory as it was 
unique for that day and age. She had wanted 
to open a school of her own in Groton, where 
her brother George was preaching, but was 
persuaded to give up the plan by her father 
and Catherine. Now, however, the opportu- 
nity had unexpectedly come to her to show 
others that she was capable of so great a re- 
sponsibility, and it pleased her greatly to find 
her efforts at managing Catherine's school so 
successful and herself so popular a teacher. 

Now came a great change in the Beecher 
fortunes. Dr. Beecher had for a long time 
been meditating on going West to take up his 
work in the new country which was rapidly 
being opened up to civilization. West at that 
time still meant east of the Mississippi River. 
The territory beyond that great waterway was 
a trackless wilderness. This great preacher 
seemed to feel that there was to be a big con- 
flict waged in the Mississippi Valley between 
the forces of right and wrong ; so when he re- 
ceived a call to become the head of Lane Theo- 
logical Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, he ac- 
cepted with characteristic enthusiasm, and 



HARRIET B. STOWE 75 

prevailed upon Catherine to go with him to 
establish a school in that city. 

Although Harriet shared her father's en- 
thusiasm for the new project, she dreaded leav- 
ing her loved ones, most of whom were estab- 
lished now in or near Hartford. Her brothers 
William and Edward were both preaching 
from their own pulpits; Henry Ward and 
Charles were in college; and the sister Mary 
was married and living in Hartford. It would 
be hard to leave all these behind, but she 
wasted no time in lamentations. There was a 
long journey to be undertaken, and she had 
an adventuresome spirit like all pioneers. So 
she decided to go with the rest of the family 
and do her part toward bettering this new 
country. 

There were no railroads to this growing 
Western city at that time, so the move of the 
Beechers was made in relays, part by steam- 
boat, part by private conveyance, and much of 
it by stage. They stopped in all the large 
towns they came to, in order that Dr. Beecher, 
whose reputation had preceded him, might 
preach to eager audiences and raise funds for 
the founding of the chair of Bibliography at 



74 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

system of self-government among the pupils 
which proved to be as satisfactory as it was 
unique for that day and age. She had wanted 
to open a school of her own in Groton, where 
her brother George was preaching, but was 
persuaded to give up the plan by her father 
and Catherine. Now, however, the opportu- 
nity had unexpectedly come to her to show 
others that she was capable of so great a re- 
sponsibility, and it pleased her greatly to find 
her efforts at managing Catherine's school so 
successful and herself so popular a teacher. 

Now came a great change in the Beecher 
fortunes. Dr. Beecher had for a long time 
been meditating on going West to take up his 
work in the new country which was rapidly 
being opened up to civilization. West at that 
time still meant east of the Mississippi River. 
The territory beyond that great waterway was 
a trackless wilderness. This great preacher 
seemed to feel that there was to be a big con- 
flict waged in the Mississippi Valley between 
the forces of right and wrong ; so when he re- 
ceived a call to become the head of Lane Theo- 
logical Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, he ac- 
cepted with characteristic enthusiasm, and 



HARRIET B. STOWE 77 

At Harrisburg they rested up for the long 
journey in the Appalachian Mountains, and it 
was well they did, for what ordinarily was but 
a two-day journey dragged itself out over 
eight days, on account of bad roads and poor 
horses. When they reached Wheeling, they 
had expected to take the canal boat down the 
Ohio River to Cincinnati, but because of a 
rumored epidemic of cholera along this water- 
way, they decided to continue their journey 
by stagecoach, even though this meant a longer 
trip, and many miles of it were over a corduroy 
road, made of logs laid crosswise and covered 
with dirt — a very rough and jolting ride. But 
at length they reached the beautiful Ohio 
Valley and entered the city of Cincinnati, 
which was to be the Beecher home for 
eighteen years. 

Samuel and John Foote, Harriet's uncles, 
were wealthy residents of this new city of the 
West, so the Beechers were cordially welcomed 
and quickly introduced to the social life of the 
new country. Their first home here was a 
very uncomfortable, unsatisfactory affair, in- 
conveniently arranged, and with very little 
light or ventilation, which Harriet hinted was 



78 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

due to the fact that the owner was a bachelor. 
The kitchen was entirely separated from the 
rest of the house, so it was necessary to go out 
of doors to reach it at all. But they did not lin- 
ger long in that place. A house was being pre- 
pared for them at Walnut Hills, close to Lane 
Seminary and they moved into it as soon as it 
was ready. It was about two miles from the 
heart of town, but the roadway leading to it 
lay through some of the most beautiful scenery 
the Beechers had known, much to the delight 
of Catherine and Harriet, who had to make 
the trip daily to and from their school. 

The house was a two-story brick building 
facing west, with a long L running back into 
a thick grove of beech and black oak which 
gave them shade during the heat of the sum- 
mer, and protected them from the bitter winds 
of winter. Here it was that the venturesome 
little sister, Isabella, climbed to the topmost 
branches of the high trees and rocked in their 
cradling arms as she listened to the music of 
the whispering leaves. There was a wide ver- 
anda built in the angle formed by the L, and 
here the family lived during the hot summer 
months. 



HARRIET B. STOWE 79 

Dr. Beecher, besides being head of the Sem- 
inary, was also pastor of the Second Church 
of Cincinnati, considered the best church in 
the city, having been offered the position by the 
parishioners with the understanding that he 
give the church just what time he could spare 
from the Seminary. So the family became 
happily established in this growing city of the 
West which had sprung up like a mushroom 
in the night. There was room for thirty 
steamboats to tie up to the wharves at one time, 
and the river was a busy place, for Cincinnati 
had a lively export and import trade even in 
1832, which was the year the Beechers took up 
their residence there. The city also boasted 
twenty-one foundries and factories, a medical 
college and hospital, a court house, a theater, 
a museum, several public libraries and fifteen 
churches. 

Catherine had great ambitions for her school, 
which was to include a teachers' training de- 
partment of fifty or sixty young ladies, a pri- 
mary department of a similar number of little 
girls and a school for little boys, on the plan of 
our normal schools of to-day; for this pioneer 
educator foresaw that eventually the teaching 



80 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

of young America was to be done by the 
women of the land. The men would be en- 
gaged in sterner duties, tilling the soil, preach- 
ing from the pulpit and blazing the trail still 
further into the west. She experienced some 
difficulty in securing qualified teachers at 
first, so Harriet threw herself into the work 
with characteristic energy, much to the detri- 
ment of her health. She worked early and 
late, neglecting her physical needs, as she had 
always done, until she was completely ex- 
hausted, and wrote pathetically to her friend, 
Georgiana May, back East, that she was no 
good to herself nor to anyone else. 

The school very early in its career discov- 
ered that all geographies then published for 
children were very unsatisfactory, and Harriet 
was appointed to compile this important text- 
book. She called it the "New Geography for 
Children," and it instantly sprang into such 
favor, that it was used by all the primary 
schools of Cincinnati. It was not the kind of 
geography that is used by schools of to-day, 
but was written like a story, depicting the cus- 
toms of the different peoples of the earth, their 
manners, religions, laws, and characteristics. 



HARRIET B. STOWE 81 

All his life Dr. Beecher had been very open 
and emphatic in his opposition to the Church 
of Rome, but his daughter Harriet was more 
diplomatic and unprejudiced in the matter, 
and handled the question so tactfully in this 
little geography, that Bishop Purcell, while 
visiting the Beecher school, commended her for 
her attitude, much to her delight. She also 
treated the subject of slavery very ably, show- 
ing how England had forced this wretched 
system upon her colonial possessions this side 
of the Atlantic, and censuring the Mother 
Country for the misery it had caused our fair 
land. But notwithstanding this and other very 
pointed remarks concerning England's treat- 
ment of America, nearly twenty years later, 
this book was published in its original form in 
England, for use in English schools. 



AS WIFE AND MOTHER 

In the summer of 1834, Harriet went East 
to see her brother, Henry Ward, graduate 
from Amherst College. She traveled by stage 
to Toledo, Ohio, and by steamboat to Buffalo. 

While she was in the East, she received the 
sad tidings that a very dear friend, Eliza Ty- 
ler Stowe, had died. She was the wife of 
Calvin E. Stowe, then teaching at Lane Theo- 
logical Seminary, and was so beloved of her 
husband that her death nearly drove him in- 
sane. So, upon Harriet's return to Cincinnati, 
she strove to comfort him as best she could, 
and their friendship ripened into a real love 
affair which culminated in their marriage two 
years later. 

But they were not able to settle down in a 
home of their own at once, for, through the 
influence of General Harrison, Professor 
Stowe was appointed a commissioner by the 

82 



HARRIET B. STOWE 83 

State of Ohio to investigate the public school 
systems of Europe. In addition to this, the 
Lane Seminary faculty intrusted him with 
funds for the purpose of buying some much 
needed supplies for their library while abroad, 
and he sailed for Europe in June, 1836, just 
five months after his marriage. It was not pos- 
sible for Mrs. Stowe to accompany him, so she 
went to live at her father's house during his 
absence, and kept herself busy writing short 
stories and articles for the Western Monthly 
Magazine and the New York Evangelist. 
She also helped her brother Henry, who at 
that time was editing a small daily paper in 
Cincinnati, called the Journal. 

In a letter to a friend, she says of her mar- 
riage, "I was married when I was twenty-five 
years of age to a man rich in Greek and He- 
brew, Latin and Arabic, and, also, rich in noth- 
ing else." And this condition remained true 
all her life, in spite of the fact that she earned 
large sums of money by her writing. Neither 
she nor her husband was a good business man- 
ager, and they invested unwisely, were imposed 
upon by so-called charities, and in other ways 
soon used up all the money they earned. 



84 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

In a brief autobiographical sketch she says 
that when she set up housekeeping her entire 
stock of china cost her eleven dollars. Two 
years later when her brother was married and 
came visiting her with his bride, she had to buy 
ten dollars' worth more in order to set a re- 
spectable table. But this supply was made to 
last for several years without further replen- 
ishing. She must have inherited her mother's 
gift for manufacturing household necessities, 
for she records at different times in her letters 
the making of sofas, lounges, barrel chairs, 
pillows, bolsters, mattresses and other articles 
of furniture. She could wield the paintbrush 
about the house as well as in her art, could 
drive nails as well as her brothers could, knew 
how to tack down carpets and mend furniture 
with practiced hand, and the family came to 
depend upon her in such emergencies rather 
than upon the professor. One time when a 
pane of glass had been broken in the cellar 
window, Professor Stowe decided that it was 
his duty to mend it, so he selected a thin board 
to cover the opening, and went to work with 
hammer and nails. But after he had suc- 
ceeded in breaking the rest of the glass in the 



HARRIET B. STOWE 85 

window, and almost demolishing the sash, he 
returned to the house much crestfallen, and 
Mrs- Stowe quietly repaired the damaged 
window. 

Besides these rather peculiar accomplish- 
ments, Mrs. Stowe possessed the ability to cut 
and fit her own clothes, and even to make her 
husband's coats and her own shoes. When she 
found it difficult to insert the rubber in the 
sides of certain styles of shoes, she invented 
a way of lacing them up the back, which really 
made a more presentable shoe when it was 
finished. So we discover that she was talented 
in other ways than in her writing, for surely 
very few people of to-day can make their own 
shoes, although they might succeed in fitting 
their own dresses. 

The first year of Mrs. Stowe's married life, 
twin daughters were born, while the professor 
was still in England. The fond mother 
named them Eliza Tyler and Isabella, but 
when the proud father returned from his 
lengthy sojourn in foreign lands, he insisted 
that they be called Eliza Tyler and Harriet 
Beecher. Five other babes came to enrich her 
life as the years sped by, adding more cares 



86 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

to the already busy woman, but she always 
declared that she would never exchange her 
children for all the ease, leisure and pleasure 
she could have without them. She said, "God 
invented mothers' hearts, and He certainly has 
the pattern in His own." 

She took her motherhood very seriously, 
just as she took everything else, and her grow- 
ing family became her foremost thought. 
Many anxious hours she devoted to her little 
ones in nursery and schoolroom, as well as 
hovering over their sick beds when childish ail- 
ments robbed them of their health temporarily. 
And much of their early education they re- 
ceived under her guidance in their own home. 
In speaking of this subject in one of her let- 
ters, she says, "The most fearful thing about 
this education matter is that it is example more 
than word. Talk as you will, the child fol- 
lows what he sees, not what he hears. The 
prevailing tone of the parent's character will 
make the temper of the household; the spirit 
of the parent will form the spirit of the child." 
With this thought uppermost in her heart, she 
succeeded in making the atmosphere of her 
home sweet, harmonious and happy, and be- 



HARRIET B. STOWE 87 

tween the members of her family existed a 
bond of understanding such as is rarely found. 

Domestic service was hard to obtain even in 
her time, and particularly in homes of so little 
worldly wealth. But at one time Mrs. Stowe 
had befriended a homeless English girl who 
had come to our land to seek her fortune, and 
for years this girl lived with her and helped 
her solve her household problems. Mrs. Stowe 
says she never would have lived through all 
the trials her position in life brought her, if 
it had not been for this friend, Anna. Yet in 
spite of the numberless tasks that absorbed 
her time night and day for the welfare of her 
flock, she found time to keep at her writing 
through all the years; or perhaps it would be 
better to say that she made the time, for she 
certainly learned to do several things at once, 
and in this way managed her stories when a 
less determined or a less talented soul would 
have given up in despair. She was a rapid 
writer, and could accomplish much in a brief 
time, so she forged ahead in spite of almost 
overwhelming obstacles. 

Professor Stowe was very dependent upon 
her, and being somewhat of a pessimist, drew 



88 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

upon her strength as one of the children might 
have done, for she had to cheer him on when- 
ever he became down-hearted. She mothered 
him, teased him, laughed at him, humored him, 
and yet helped him at every turn. He had a 
quick temper, and as his health broke under 
the heavy mental work he was engaged in, he 
often was decidedly irritable ; but her patience 
and his own good nature always brought about 
a happy ending to the occasional domestic ex- 
plosions. 

One day he brought home a dozen eggs to 
set, having decided to try his luck at raising 
blooded stock. Saying nothing about his in- 
tentions, he hid the eggs in the woodshed until 
he should |iave time to build a nest according 
to his *§wn notions. Naturally, the children 
found the eggs in their play and thinking that 
a hen had stolen her nest, they gathered up 
the treasure and carried it in triumph to their 
mother. She was busy with the day's cooking 
and had just discovered that there was not an 
egg in the house, so the children's find de- 
lighted her housewifely soul, and she briskly 
beat up the eggs into puddings and pies. A 
day or two later, the busy professor remem- 



HARRIET B. STOWE 89 

bered his eggs and went to get them from their 
hiding place. Finding them gone, he stormed 
the house, expressed himself in no uncertain 
terms to the whole family, and rushed wrath- 
fully away to deliver another lecture to his 
class at college. 

The ingenious and whimsical mother was 
amused at his tantrum and decided to laugh 
him out of it. So when he returned for dinner 
still feeling rather injured and peppery, he 
found the table properly set but no one in 
sight indoors or out. Perplexed, and possibly 
a little alarmed at this unusual occurrence, he 
set out to find the missing members of his fam- 
ily. A very human imitation of the cackling 
of hens drew him to the woodshed from which 
his setting of eggs had vanished, and when he 
peered in through the door for the cause of the 
loud and enthusiastic chorus of cackles, he be- 
held his wife, all the children, and even the dog 
perched on a beam overhead, making as much 
racket as they could. It was impossible to keep 
his face straight, and he burst into a hearty 
laugh. That was all they wanted, and the 
whole family trooped gaily into the house for 
the belated dinner. 



90 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Nor was the domestic calm ever any more 
seriously ruffled than on the occasion just men- 
tioned, for the professor and his wife were 
very much in love with each other to the end 
of their days, and dwelt in rare communion 
of spirit. He writes to her during an absence 
from home, "If you could come home to-day, 
how happy should I be. I am daily finding 
out more and more (what I knew very well 
before) that you are the most intelligent and 
agreeable woman in the whole circle of my ac- 
quaintance." She replies in the same vein, "If 
you were not already my dearly beloved hus- 
band, I should certainly fall in love with you." 

Next in line to her twin daughters, came two 
sons, Henry Ellis and Frederick William, 
born in 1838 and 1840. While they were very 
small the State of Ohio suffered a near-famine, 
due to the blocking of the river with ice, so 
navigation was impossible for some weeks, and 
supplies were so difficult to obtain that only 
the rich could afford even the bare necessities 
of lif e. The Stowes, like many other families, 
lived on black bread and bacon for several 
months, and this diet still further impaired 
Mrs. Stowe's health, which was very poor dur- 



HARRIET B. STOWE 91 

ing these strenuous years. She taxed her 
strength to the uttermost in helping prepare 
for a family reunion at her father's house at 
about this time, and the excitement of meeting 
brothers and sisters whom she had not seen 
for years only buoyed her temporarily. 

Eleven of Dr. Beecher's children were home 
for this reunion, and strange as it may seem, 
it was the first time some of these children had 
ever met each other ! Three different sons oc- 
cupied their father's pulpit during this cele- 
bration. But when the hardships and excite- 
ment were over, Mrs. Stowe felt compelled to 
go away for a brief rest, and returned to Hart- 
ford for a short vacation. On the way home, 
she visited her brother William in Batavia. 

The winter which followed this brief breath- 
ing spell was a hard one at Walnut Hills. Ty- 
phoid fever broke out at the Seminary, the 
Beecher house was turned into a hospital, and 
the whole family laid everything else aside to 
nurse the sick. Hardly had they recovered 
from this siege when the shocking news reached 
them that George Beecher, one of Mrs. Stowe's 
brothers, had accidentally shot himself and was 
dead. While the whole family was sorrowing 






' 



. 



92 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

over the 1; tliis loved one, Mrs. Stowe's 

fifth child, Georgiana May, was born. The 
Seminary was struggling desperately to keep 
open, there was no money to pay the salaries 
of its instructors, the students were more pov- 
erty-stricken than ever before, and finally Pro- 
901 Stowe was obliged to go East in an 
attempt to raise money for the institution. 

Mrs. Stowe was overworked and so worried 
over the ill health of her little flock that her 
own health gave way at last and she was bun- 
dled off to Dr. Wesselhoeft's water-cure at 
Brattleboro, Vermont, where she remained 
for eleven months. She demurred against 
going at this time, saying they had no money 
to pay for such expensive treatments, but 
afterwards said she should have had more faith 
in God's goodness, for the money came in from 
unknown friends who had heard of the sick- 
s in the professor's family and wanted to 
help in any way they could. Mrs. Stowe 
seemed much benefited bv her water cure, and 
returned to Walnut Hills very hopefully in 
the summer of 1847, only to suffer a very try- 
ing siege of neuralgia in her eyes which 
almost incapacitated her for work of any kind. 



HARRIET B. STOWE 93 

A sixth child, Samuel Charles, was born the 
following January, and after that her eyes, as 
well as her general health improved. But the 
anxiety of these struggles and adversities had 
proved too much for the professor, and shortly 
after this wee son was born, he, himself, was 
forced to go to Vermont to the water cure, 
where he remained for fifteen months. During 
his absence, Cincinnati was stricken with an 
epidemic of cholera which was unusually fatal 
to its victims. Hardly a home in the city es- 
caped the scourge. Professor Stow r e, learning 
of the plague, wanted to return to his family, 
but his wife opposed him so strongly because 
of his bad health, that he remained at Brattle- 
boro, although his youngest child was taken 
with the dread disease, and after a partial re- 
covery, suffered a relapse, which proved fatal. 
The oldest boy, Henry, was also ill with it, 
but did not die. Those were indeed dark days 
for the poor mother, alone with her little chil- 
dren. But with her unswerving faith in her 
God, she bore her burden bravely, and while 
her own heart was crushed with her heavy sor- 
row, she went about doing all she could for 
other stricken homes. 



94 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Professor Stowe returned to Cincinnati 
from his long absence with the determination 
to go East to live. He had been with the Lane 
Seminary for seventeen years, but several calls 
had come to him from different Eastern insti- 
tutions, and he decided to accept the position 
offered him by Bowdoin College, his Alma 
Mater. He could not at once leave Cincinnati, 
as his successor must be found to fill the place 
he would leave vacant, but after much discus- 
sion, Mrs. Stowe concluded to take three of 
the children and go to Brunswick, Maine, to 
make ready for the rest of the family when 
the professor should be at liberty to come. 

They had a long, tedious journey, for trains 
were not as common then as now, and part of 
the trip must still be made by boat. There 
was furniture to be bought, a house to be found 
and put in order, and countless unexpected 
tasks to be looked after, in the midst of a cold, 
northeastern storm that continued for days 
until every one of her brood was on edge and 
she herself just ready to die from weariness 
and disgust at the weather. But in spite of 
all her handicaps and discouragements, she 
found many of her adventures funny, and 



HARRIET B. STOWE 95 

laughed heartily over them with family and 
friends. 

The kitchen in the dreary old house they 
had to live in when they first reached Bruns- 
wick had no sink, cistern or other water 
near at hand. But the resourceful Mrs. Stowe 
bought two hogsheads, with the idea of putting 
them down cellar in place of a real cistern, 
when to her dismay she discovered that the 
only cellar door in the house was in the kitchen, 
and was a mean, narrow affair, leading down 
a steep, almost perpendicular flight of stairs. 
Not to be discouraged at this state of affairs, 
nor forced to give up this desire of her heart, 
she set herself to think out some solution of 
the difficulty, and decided that the hogsheads 
must come to pieces and be set up again in the 
cellar. Arrived at this decision, she was for- 
tunate enough to find an honest Yankee 
cooper who actually carried out this idea one 
summer forenoon, and put her novel cisterns 
in working order, to the utter amazement of 
the natives, who thought it could not be done 
satisfactorily. 

But when it came to getting a sink installed, 
Mrs. Stowe encountered greater difficulties, 



96 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

for the only carpenter available was her own 
landlord, who valued his leisure more than his 
income, and did not think it was ever neces- 
sary to hurry. Though capable of doing al- 
most anything, he contented himself with 
doing next to nothing, and it was weeks before 
Mrs. Stowe could persuade him to finish that 
much-needed article of furniture. 

On the 8th of July, following their advent 
in Brunswick, the seventh and last child was 
born in the Stowe family. He was named 
Charles Ellis. During the months preceding 
his birth, in addition to the many tasks Mrs. 
Stowe found to occupy her time in getting 
ready the new home for her flock, she had 
taught school for the benefit of her own chil- 
dren an hour each day, and had read to them 
two hours every evening. Naturally, she found 
little time to write. But after the newest baby 
had come, she set to work to prepare the arti- 
cles and stories she had promised newspaper 
editors. She says of her literary efforts at this 
time, "Nothing but deadly determination en- 
ables me ever to write; it is rowing against 
wind and tide." But at this period of her life 
when she was perhaps the very busiest with 



HARRIET B. STOWE 97 

household matters and family anxieties, she 
began the greatest work she ever did ; in fact, 
the greatest work any American woman ever 
did. 

During the month of December, while her 
husband was still teaching at Lane Seminary, 
she wrote him for information she wished to 
use in getting up an article for the Era, on 
the capabilities of the liberated blacks for tak- 
ing care of themselves. Earlier in the year, 
on her way to the new Brunswick home, she 
had stopped ten days in Boston to visit her 
brother Edward, then preaching in that city. 
Daniel Webster's Seventh of March speech 
was still the topic of the day. That this great 
man, idolized by the nation, should advocate 
the Fugitive Slave Law was a cruel blow to 
all the Beechers, and from this time on, Mrs. 
Stowe devoted more and more of her time to 
the cause of the slave. But it was after Mrs. 
Stowe had reached Brunswick that her 
brother Edward's wife wrote her, "Hattie, if 
I could use a pen as you can, I would write 
something to make this whole nation feel what 
an accursed thing slavery is." When the let- 
ter was read in the midst of the family circle in 



98 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Brunswick, Mrs. Stowe was so wrought up by 
it that she sprang to her feet and cried, "I will 
write something. I will if I live!" Thus it 
was that she began writing "Uncle Tom's 
Cabin" that same winter, and the next April 
the first chapter of the book, destined to be- 
come famous the world over, was sent to the 
editor of the National Era in Washington. 



VI 

AS A WRITER 

Harriet Beecher's first ventures as a 
writer were made to amuse herself, and with 
no thought of ever becoming an author. In- 
deed, her early ambition was to be a great poet, 
and when but a child of thirteen she wrote a 
lengthy drama in blank verse, called "Cleon," 
that being the name of an historical character 
about whom she had been studying in school. 
Cleon was a Greek lord who lived during 
Nero's time and was Nero's friend. He wor- 
shiped Greek gods until he heard about Christ 
and became a Christian. This brought down 
the wrath of the wicked king upon his head, and 
Cleon was subjected to every conceivable tor- 
ture to make him renounce his faith, which he 
steadfastly refused to do. 

Harriet became so engrossed in her theme 
that she forgot everything else, neglected her 
studies, and actually filled several books with 

99 



100 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

her verses. But when Catherine saw her com- 
plete absorption in this thing, she put a stop 
to it, saying that the girl was wasting her time 
and must discipline her mind by studying 
"Butler's Analogy." Consequently she gave 
up her idea of writing poetry and settled down 
to such hard study that in a very short time 
she was set to instructing a class of girls her 
own age in this "Analogy." She managed to 
keep herself prepared a chapter in advance of 
her pupils, and in this way began her teaching 
while she was still a pupil herself. Thus Cath- 
erine's interference effectually checked the 
younger sister's youthAil ambition, and when 
she took up her pen to write again, it was prose 
she selected to express her thoughts. 

Soon after the Beechers went to live in the 
spacious house at Walnut Hills, which they 
came to love so dearly, Harriet was invited 
to become a member of a literary club, organ- 
ized by her uncle, Samuel Foote, and some old 
New England friends then living in Cincin- 
nati, many of whom later became famous. 
This club was called the "Semi-colon Club," 
and they explained their choice of name by 
saying that "Colon" was the Spanish name for 




HARRIET BEECHER 
Portrait made before her marriage to Mr. Stowe 



HARRIET B. STOWE 101 

Columbus. If the discoverer of a continent 
could be called a colon, then the discoverers of 
a new pastime ought to be allowed the privilege 
of calling themselves "semi-colons." The new 
pastime was, of course, the exchange of ideas 
at their weekly meetings, and Samuel Foote 
drew about him a host of intellectual as well 
as genial spirits, who made the gatherings most 
interesting and helpful to all the members, 
but especially to such eager, inquiring minds 
as Harriet Beecher's was, and she let her fancy 
run riot in the new field this club opened up 
to her. 

Her first literary flight after she joined the 
ranks of the "Semi-colons," was a letter writ- 
ten in the exaggerated, pompous style of 
Bishop Butler. Her next effort was a satire 
on the modern uses of language. This was so 
well received by the Club that the editor of the 
Western Magazine asked permission to pub- 
lish it in that periodical. She was so well 
pleased with the result of her first attempts 
that she became more ambitious and planned 
to play a practical joke on the rest of the Club 
by writing a series of letters purporting to 
come from a group of country people, who 



102 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

were intellectual, refined and agreeable. These 
letters were written after a plan adopted by the 
Beecher family when its members became so 
widely scattered that individual letters to each 
person would have made the family correspon- 
dence a heavy tax on time and energy. Cath- 
erine, perhaps, would start the ball rolling by 
writing a letter to Harriet. She, after reading 
it, would add a letter from her own pen and 
send it on to the married sister Mary, who, in 
turn, would put in her contribution of news 
and mail it to Edward; and so on until the 
accumulation of letters had been the rounds of 
that large family circle, and every member 
knew what the other members were doing. 

When Harriet had written the first one of 
her series, she smoked it to make it look yel- 
lowed with age, and tore the edges to give it the 
appearance of having been much read. She 
imitated the postmark by smearing the ink, 
sealed the letter with sealing-wax, and broke it 
open again, just as a real letter would have 
been broken open. Finally she inclosed it in 
another envelope and addressed it to Mrs. 
Samuel E. Foote. Then she wrote her cousin 
Elizabeth Foote about the joke, so she would 



HARRIET B. STOWE 103 

be on the lookout for the letter which arrived 
in due time and completely fooled the whole 
family, even the world- wise Uncle Samuel him- 
self, who thought it was a real letter of years 
past. 

About this time the Western Magazine of- 
fered a prize of fifty dollars for the best short 
story submitted to its editors, and Harriet 
won the prize with a story she called "A New 
England Sketch," but afterwards renamed 
"Uncle Tim" and incorporated in the volume, 
"Mayflower," published by Harper Brothers 
in 1843. At first she seemed reluctant to sign 
her own name to her writings, and was de- 
lighted when her productions were attributed 
to Catherine's pen; but as time went on she 
laid aside such scruples and took great pleas- 
ure in her literary achievements. 

Before her marriage, she wrote merely for 
the pleasure she found in expressing her 
thoughts, but afterwards it became a stern 
necessity, for she married a man whose only 
wealth lay in his learning; and as the years 
brought a large family of children into the 
home, she could not make ends meet with only 
his meager salary to depend upon; so when 



104 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

a new mattress or a carpet was needed, she 
laid aside her household cares long enough to 
compose a "piece," as she called her stories, 
and these pieces always seemed to bring in the 
necessary funds to replenish the furnishings of 
her home. With the first money she earned 
in this manner, she bought a featherbed and 
pillows ! 

She was never a student of literature, and 
many of her works have been severely criticized 
because of their lack of style; yet their very 
lack is sometimes an added charm to the sim- 
ply-told, every-day happenings which she 
chose to write about. Her great sympathy for 
humanity inspired most of her efforts, and that 
is why they are so successful. 

She was a good housekeeper and naturally 
found little leisure for literary flights after her 
babies came, but fortunately she composed 
rapidly, wrote swiftly, and did very little re- 
vising; so she accomplished wonders in the few 
minutes she snatched from household drudg- 
ery when her faithful friend, Anna, was mind- 
ing the children. And when the stories did 
need copying, she usually found some friend 
or relative ready to take the task off her hands. 



HARRIET B. STOWE 105 

Her sister Catherine tells in a droll way of 
an incident she witnessed while visiting Har- 
riet, which shows how the busy mother wrote 
and managed the house at the same time. 
Catherine found her in the nursery tending 
one baby and watching the twins, then just 
able to walk, and when the older sister re- 
minded her of a serial she was writing for the 
Souvenir and asked for the next instalment 
that very day, Mrs. Stowe told her it must 
wait until housecleaning was over and the baby 
had cut his teeth. Catherine thought the 
housecleaning could wait, and as it would take 
months for the baby to cut all his teeth there 
was no good in waiting for him, either. Still 
Mrs. Stowe demurred, saying she had a new 
girl in the kitchen and it was baking day, but 
Catherine was firm, and brushed away the ex- 
cuses as fast as they were made. "You know 
that you can write anywhere, and anyhow,' ' 
she told her younger sister. "Just take your 
seat at the kitchen table with your writing 
weapons, and while you superintend Mina, fill 
up the odd snatches of time with the labors of 
your pen. 

"I carried my point. In ten minutes she 



106 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

was seated; a table with flour, rolling-pin, 
ginger and lard on one side; a dresser with 
eggs, pork, and beans and various cooking 
utensils on the other, near her an oven heating, 
and beside her a dark-skinned nymph waiting 
for orders. 

" 'Here, Harriet, 5 said I, 'you can write on 
this atlas in your lap ; no matter how the writ- 
ing looks, I will copy it.' 

" 'Well, well,' she said, with a resigned sort 
of an amused look. 'Mina, you may do what 
I told you, while I write a few minutes, till 
it is time to mold up the bread. Where is the 
inkstand?' 

: ' 'Here it is, on top of the tea-kettle, close 
by,' said I. 

"At this Mina giggled, and we both laughed 
to see her merriment at our literary proceed- 
ings. 

"I began to overhaul the portfolio to find 
the right sheet. 'Here it is,' said I, 'here is 
Frederick sitting by Ellen glancing at her 
brilliant face and saying something about 
"guardian angel," and all that — you remem- 
ber?' 

" 'Yes, yes,' she said, falling into a muse as 



HARRIET B. STOWE 107 

she attempted to recover the thread of her 
story. 

" 'Ma'am, shall I put the pork on the top 
of the beans?' asked Mina. 

; 'Come, come,' said Harriet, laughing. 
'You see how it is. Mina is a new hand and 
cannot do anything without me to direct her. 
We must give up the writing for to-day.' 

" 'No, no, let us have another trial. You 
can dictate as easily as you can write. Come, 
I can set the baby in this clothes basket and 
give him some mischief or another to keep him 
quiet ; you shall dictate and I will write. Now 
this is the place where you left off; you were 
describing the scene between Ellen and her 
lover: the last sentence was, "Borne down by 
the tide of agony she leaned her head on her 
hands, the tears streamed through her fingers, 
and her whole frame shook with convulsive 
sobs." What next?' 

' 'Mina, pour a little milk into this pear- 
hash!' said Harriet. 

" 'Come,' said I, ' "The tears streamed 
through her fingers, and her whole frame shook 
with convulsive sobs." What next?' 

"Harriet paused, and looked musingly out 



108 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

of the window as she turned her mind to her 
story. 'You may write now/ said she, and she 
dictated as follows:— 

" 'Her lover wept with her, nor dared again 
to touch the point so sacredly guarded. — 
Mina, roll that crust a little thinner. — He 
spoke in soothing tones. — Mina, poke the 
coals in the oven/ 

" 'Here/ said I, 'let me direct Mina about 
these matters and write a while yourself/ ' 

Then Catherine continues: 

"Harriet took the pen and patiently set her- 
self to work. For a while my culinary knowl- 
edge and skill were proof to all Mina's inves- 
tigating inquiries, and they did not fail till I 
saw two pages completed. 

" 'You have done bravely/ said I, as I read 
over the manuscript; 'now you must direct 
Mina awhile. Meantime dictate, and I will 
write/ 

"'Never was there a more docile literary lady 
than my sister. Without a word of objection 
she followed my request. 

" 'I am ready to write/ said I. 'The last 
sentence was, "What is this life to one who has 
suffered as I have?" What next?' 



HARRIET B. STOWE 109 

" 'Shall I put in the brown, or the white 
bread first?' asked Mina. 

" 'The brown first/ said Harriet. 

" ' "What is this life to one who has suffered 
as I have?" ' said I. 

"Harriet brushed the flour off her apron, 
and sat down for a moment in a muse. Then 
she dictated as follows: — 

" 'Under the breaking of my heart I have 
borne up. I have borne up under all that 
tries a woman, — but this thought, — oh, 
Henry!' 

" 'Ma'am, shall I put ginger in this pump- 
kin?' queried Mina. 

" 'No, you may let that alone just now,' re- 
plied Harriet. She then proceeded: 

" 'I know my duty to my children, I see the 
hour must come. You must take them, 
Henry; they are my last earthly comfort.' 

" 'Ma'am, what shall I do with these egg- 
shells, and all this truck here?' interrupted 
Mina. 

" 'Put them in the pail by you,' answered 
Harriet. 

" ' "They are my last earthly comfort," 
said I. 'What next?' 



110 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

"She continued to dictate, — 

" 'You must take them away. It may be 
— perhaps it must be — that I shall soon fol- 
low, but the breaking heart of a wife still 
pleads, "a little longer, a little longer." 

" 'How much longer must the gingerbread 
stay in?' asked Mina. 

" 'Five minutes/ said Harriet, 

" ' "A little longer, a little longer," ' I re- 
peated in a dolorous tone, and we burst out 
into a laugh. 

"Thus we went on, cooking, writing, nurs- 
ing, and laughing, till I finally accomplished 
my object. The piece was finished and cop- 
ied, and the next day sent to the editor." 

It is true that Mrs. Stowe often wrote her 
stories while superintending the housework, 
but she did not advocate such a plan for au- 
thors. In fact, when her genius became an 
acknowledged fact, and her own husband was 
urging her to devote her life to it, she wrote 
him while away on a vacation, that if she were 
to produce acceptable articles, she must have 
a room of her own where she could go and be 
quiet and undisturbed. She suggested a cer- 
tain room in the house, and proposed setting 



HARRIET B. STOWE 111 

up a stove there so she could have her plants 
and be cosy while she wrote. She had bought 
a cheap carpet for the floor, even as she wrote 
of her plans. But she knew Professor Stowe 
would never object. He would heartily in- 
dorse any plan that would give his talented 
wife the opportunity she craved. So she got 
her room and the quiet she found so essen- 
tial, and no doubt found it possible to write 
better stories than ever before. 

There certainly is no sameness about her 
tales. She wrote on every subject under the 
sun, books of nature for youthful readers, in 
which she relates the experiences of the Nut- 
cracker Lodge, of the Robin family, of the 
humming-bird that was blown in at the win- 
dow one windy day, of the squirrels and mag- 
pies, and of the katydids who refused to asso- 
ciate with the crickets because they were 
black; novels, tales of foreign travel, ro- 
mances, character sketches, slavery stories, 
and text-books, all dripped from her versatile 
pen with apparent ease. 

Early in life she conceived the idea that she 
had a particular mission in the world to per- 
form, and thought she had found it when the 



112 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

plot of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" unfolded in her 
mind; so she worked at it tirelessly while it 
grew in magnitude until it became the stu- 
pendous production that was one of the chief 
causes of our Civil War. 



VII 

AS AUTHOR OF "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" 

We have already seen how stirred Mrs. 
Stowe was over the Fugitive Slave Law, which 
was enacted for the purpose of giving slave 
owners the privilege of pursuing and bringing 
back runaway slaves from any state in the 
Union, and also how her sister-in-law's letter 
roused in this gifted writer the desire to write 
something which would stir the public to a 
realization of what a menace to society slavery 
really was. But there were other reasons 
which caused her to write her wonderful book, 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin." 

When she was but a girl, her aunt, Mary 
Hubbard, who had married a planter of the 
West Indies, returned to her New England 
home to live, unable to remain on her hus- 
band's plantation any longer because she could 
not endure the sights she was daily compelled 
to witness among the miserable slaves of the 

113 



114 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Islands- The Beecher children were greatly 
impressed with the terrible tales she told them, 
and Harriet never forgot her aunt's agony of 
spirit over the great wrong which she could 
not right nor even lessen, however much she 
tried. 

A few years later, while she was teaching 
in Catherine's school in Hartford, she visited 
a Kentucky slave plantation with another 
teacher of that school. Here she saw only the 
best side of slavery. There was little to shock 
or disturb her. The negroes were well cared 
for and seemed happy enough. Harriet ap- 
parently gave little heed to what she saw about 
the plantation, yet years later when her friend, 
the teacher, was reading "Uncle Tom's 
Cabin," she recognized the description of the 
Shelby farm as that of the plantation they had 
visited that day. 

For seventeen years Mrs. Stowe lived in 
Ohio, just across the river from Kentucky, 
which was a slave state, and she not only had 
seen runaway slaves, but had aided them her- 
self in their dash for freedom. In fact, what 
was called the "underground railroad" ran 
through her own home. This underground 



HARRIET B. STOWE 115 

railroad was a chain of houses of people known 
to be friendly to the black race, and with these 
families the escaped slaves knew they would 
be safe until they could press on to the next 
station on this peculiar railway system. In 
Cincinnati there was quite a settlement of free 
negroes, among whom runaways often took 
refuge, until the enactment of the Fugitive 
Slave Law made it impossible for them to find 
safety anywhere in the United States. Mrs. 
Stowe often had colored help from this settle- 
ment, and from this source learned much that 
made her heartsick over the plight of this un- 
happy race. Many times she taught black 
children in her own home with her own chil- 
dren because that was the only means they 
had of receiving an education, and Mrs. Stowe 
believed in uplifting the black man as well as 
in giving him his freedom. She always prac- 
ticed what she preached. 

Her father and six brothers were ministers 
of the Gospel, and every man of them was 
bitterly opposed to slavery and had the cour- 
age to attack it from the pulpit. It was a 
ticklish thing in those days for a preacher to 
come out openly on such a question, and many; 



116 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

a man who really believed the system was 
wrong, kept silent rather than antagonize his 
congregation; but not so with the Beechers. 
Henry Ward was at this time pastor of Ply- 
mouth Church in Brooklyn, and many slaves 
owed their freedom to this man, who, by his 
wonderful eloquence was able to rouse his peo- 
ple to such intense feeling that time after time 
they raised money enough to redeem some 
fugitive who had taken refuge in the shadow 
of this church. 

One night Henry Ward came to visit his 
sister, through a blinding snowstorm, and they 
sat up all night discussing this grave question 
which was menacing the very life of their coun- 
try. She told him she intended to write a 
story directed against the evil, and he prom- 
ised that he would scatter the book over the 
face of the earth as thick as the leaves of Val- 
lombrosa! 

While Mrs. Stowe was still living at her 
father's house in Cincinnati, her brother 
Charles was studying for the ministry, but 
could not reconcile his own beliefs with his 
father's Calvinistic theology; and at last, de- 
spairing of ever being able to make a preacher 



HARRIET B. STOWE 117 

of himself, he accepted a position as clerk for 
a wholesale commission house in New Orleans. 
This company did business with cotton plan- 
tations of the Red River district, and here 
Charles saw the worst side of the slave trade. 
On one of his trips he met a heartless trader 
who boasted that he had hardened his huge 
fists in knocking down "niggers." From her 
brother's description of the man Mrs. Stowe 
drew her picture of Legree, the slayer of 
Uncle Tom. From this same source she also 
got the incident of the slave woman who cast 
herself into the river from the boat, preferring 
to drown rather than be sold to a cotton plan- 
tation where such terrible conditions existed 
for the hapless negro. 

During Mrs. Stowe's young womanhood, a 
wealthy, refined Louisiana family came to 
Ohio and settled near Cincinnati, bringing 
with them a number of negro servants whom 
they liberated. Among these freed slaves was 
a queer, impish little girl who attended a small 
mission Sunday School where Mrs. Stowe was 
teaching, and furnished a good deal of amuse- 
ment by her antics. This child has been faith- 
fully reproduced in Topsy, 



118 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

• 

In her own family she had as a servant a 
young woman whose son is the original of 
little Harry. One day after the Fugitive 
Slave Law had become a law of the land, this 
young mother learned that her former master 
was in the city hunting for her. In her terror 
she flew to Mrs. Stowe with her story, and that 
night in a raging storm, Professor Stowe and 
Henry Ward Beecher drove the woman and 
her child to a lonely farmhouse owned by a 
man named Van Sant, who also conducted a 
station on the underground railroad; and here 
she found shelter until such time as it would 
be safe for her to go on to Canada. This 
scene Mrs. Stowe has reproduced in her de- 
scription of Eliza's flight, as well as the true 
incident of the crossing of the Ohio River on 
floating cakes of ice. Mrs. Stowe met and 
talked with the man who had helped the flee- 
ing young negress up the Ohio bank after her 
perilous trip, and from him obtained all the 
little details which she later wove into her 
story. 

A friend who had witnessed the sale of 
slaves at auction, described the pitiful scenes 
of mothers parted from their children, of hus- 



HARRIET B. STOWE 119 

bands torn from their wives, and of educated, 
refined mulattoes or quadroons sold to cotton 
planters for work on the southern plantations 
where slave life was of the lowest type. She 
learned from eye witnesses how the black man 
was punished, even to being killed by unfeel- 
ing and cruel masters, who boasted that they 
had no use for sick niggers, but "turned them 
in with the crops." Thus from various sources 
the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" garnered 
her material, but always she verified it before 
introducing it into the book which was des- 
tined to shake this country from border to 
border. Facts were what she was seeking, and 
facts were what she got, — overwhelming, dis- 
maying, terrible facts! 

One day, sitting at communion in church, 
she had a vision of the death of Uncle Tom; 
and hurrying home, she wrote the chapter, 
with no thought whatever of the book as a 
whole. Calling her children to her, she read 
what she had written, and they wept bitterly, 
so clear was the picture she had sketched with 
her pen. Her ten- and twelve-year-old sons 
clenched their fists and cried, "Oh, mamma, 
slavery is the most cruel thing in the world!" 



120 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Professor Stowe was absent from home at the 
time this was written, but some time later he 
came across the scribbled sheets in a drawer 
where his wife had tucked them for safe keep- 
ing, and she found him with tears streaming 
down his face as he read the words so hastily 
scrawled on scraps of brown paper saved from 
the groceries she had bought at the store. It 
was his suggestion that she make a serial story 
of it with the death scene as a climax, and she 
wrote the editor of the National Era, saying 
that she was contemplating writing such a 
serial and asking if he cared to make use of 
it. He promptly spoke for it, and it ap- 
peared a few chapters at a time for nearly a 
year before the whole book was done. 

Never in the true sense of the word was 
Mrs. Stowe or her husband an Abolitionist. 
She heard a great deal of the abolitionist doc- 
trine preached, and witnessed the anti-aboli- 
tionist riots in Cincinnati, which at one time 
even threatened Lane Seminary because this 
institution housed so many abolitionist stu- 
dents. These disgraceful disturbances were 
caused primarily because Dr. Bailey published 
his anti-slavery paper in Cincinnati, and slave 



HARRIET B. STOWE 121 

traders just across the border resented his at- 
titude. Twice, mobs led by slaveholders from 
the Kentucky side of the river, attacked his 
office, destroyed its contents and set fire to 
the building. Not content with venting their 
spite in this manner, they raided the shacks of 
the free black people and drove them from the 
city, burning their houses and abusing the 
frightened negroes. 

During this time Henry Ward Beecher 
carried loaded pistols with him for days, and 
his grim countenance, as he made these ready 
for use, told his sister for the first time just 
how serious the anti-slavery situation was be- 
coming. The members of the Beecher house- 
hold slept many a night with arms in the house 
and a great bell ready to summon help from 
the Seminary students in case the mob should 
come to search their premises for fugitive 
slaves. But fortunately, Walnut Hills, where 
the Seminary was located, was two miles from 
town, and the poor, hilly roads, with their deep 
and clay-like mud, proved too great an ob- 
stacle for the rioters to overcome; so these 
good people were never molested. 

At length, Dr. Bailey gave up the struggle 



122 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

in Cincinnati, and went to Washington to es- 
tablish his paper there, where by his courtesy, 
courage and honesty, he made friends among 
even the most outspoken slaveholders of the 
south. But all anti-slavery advocates were not 
as fortunate as Dr. Bailey. Love joy, who at- 
tempted to edit a similar paper in Alton, Illi- 
nois, was shot to death by the infuriated mob 
who destroyed his office and set fire to his 
house. At first it was reported that Edward 
Beecher, who had been a great friend of Love- 
joy's, had been killed at the same time; but 
this proved to be a false rumor. 

Mrs. Stowe had no sympathy, of course, 
with these rioters, nor did she advocate the 
violent methods the Abolitionists proposed for 
ridding the country of the slave traffic. She 
did not believe the Abolitionists would receive 
her book favorably, because it was not as rad- 
ical as the doctrines they preached; but she 
confidently expected that the South would ac- 
cept it with applause because she thought she 
had treated the subject with such fairness. To 
her utter surprise and genuine consternation, 
the South rose in a mass to denounce her, while 
the Abolitionists hailed the product of her pen 



HARRIET B. STOWE 123 

with wild enthusiasm. William Lloyd Gar- 
rison, in commenting on this book in a letter 
he wrote to her personally, remarks that since 
her story had made its appearance, the slave- 
holders of the South had ceased to bother him 
with their denunciations, but had directed all 
their venom toward the author of "Uncle 
Tom's Cabin." 

Originally Mrs. Stowe intended the serial 
to run about three months, but as a matter of 
fact, it grew to such magnitude that it con- 
tinued from June 5, 1851 to April, 1852. The 
month before the last instalment appeared in 
the National Era, it was published in book 
form by John P. Jewett, of Boston, who made 
overtures for its publication in this form long 
before it was complete as a serial. Mr. Jewett, 
however, felt called upon to protest at the 
length of the story, saying that it would be too 
long for one volume, and being an unpopular 
subject, was apt not to succeed when it did 
appear on the market. Mrs. Stowe replied 
that she could not help the length of the story, 
for it had made itself, and she must continue 
to write it down until it was done. Mr. 
Jewett offered her ten per cent of all sales, or 



124 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

half the profit with half the risk, if the book 
should be a failure. Mrs. Stowe's business ad- 
visor was Philip Greeley, a member of Con- 
gress, and he counseled her to accept the ten 
per cent royalty, agreeing with Mr. Jewett 
that the subject was too unpopular to allow 
of any great success, and besides, a book writ- 
ten by a woman stood little chance of an ex- 
tensive sale at best. 

When the volume finally made its appear- 
ance, Professor Stowe carried one of the first 
copies they received from the publisher to the 
railroad station where the Congressman was 
about to board a train for Washington, and 
this very calm and collected New Englander, 
who had so poor an opinion of woman's ability 
as an author, immediately opened the volume 
and began to read as soon as his train pulled 
out of the depot. To his profound amaze- 
ment and deepest chagrin, he found the tears 
streaming down his cheeks as the simple tale 
unfolded itself before him; and being unable 
to check their flow, he left the train at Spring- 
field, engaged a room at a hotel, and sat up far 
into the night until he had finished this novel, 
of whose success he had been so doubtful. 



HARRIET B. STOWE 125 

Three thousand copies were sold the first 
day the book appeared on the market, and 
over three hundred thousand in a year. As a 
serial, the author received but three hundred 
dollars for it. In book form it brought her 
considerably more than ten thousand dollars. 
She had never given the money part of it any 
great thought, saying only that she hoped it 
would bring her enough to buy a new gown 
with. When the first check for ten thousand 
dollars reached her, — royalties for the first 
three months' sale, — she passed it without 
comment to the Professor. He gazed at it 
in astonishment for some moments, then 
gasped, "Why, Hattie, that is more money 
than I ever saw in my life!" 

When the book was nearly finished, Mrs. 
Stowe's strength suddenly left her, and she 
suffered a great reaction mentally as well as 
physically. In her discouragement she won- 
dered if anyone would ever read what she had 
written. How little she realized that this 
heart-thrilling tale of hers was to be a con- 
tributing cause to the greatest war our nation 
had ever known! 

The story as a whole has often been criti- 



126 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

cized because it has no literary style ; but how- 
ever that may be, it had the greatest circula- 
tion of any book in America except the Bible, 
and has had almost as many translations. 
There have been no less than sixty-six transla- 
tions, not counting abridgments or dramas. 
Because the United States had no copyright 
laws at that time, and Mrs. Stowe failed to 
secure a copyright in England, she unfortu- 
nately received but a small percent of the 
money she should have had from the various 
editions of her book, and no compensation 
whatever for its dramatization, though it is 
doubtful if any other story has ever been so 
often played on the public stage. 

In commenting on the popularity of the au- 
thor, Dr. O. W. Holmes has said: 

"Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane, 
Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine, 

Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi, 
High Dutchman and low Dutchman, too, 
The Russian serf, the Polish Jew, 
Arab, Armenian, and Mantchoo, 

Would shout, 'We know the lady.' " 

Most of the book was written while the 
Stowes were living in Brunswick, Maine, but 



HARRIET B. STOWE 127 

just before it was completed the Professor de- 
cided to accept a position offered him in the 
Theological Seminary of Andover, Massa- 
chusetts, and they moved again. There being 
no available house large enough for their fam- 
ily, the school authorities gave them permis- 
sion to make use of an abandoned stone build- 
ing, which had formerly been a workshop ; and 
they took possession at once, finding great de- 
light in remodeling the structure to suit their 
needs. Thereafter the place was always re- 
ferred to as the Stone Cabin, and it became a 
great gathering place for learned men of the 
day. 



VIII 

!AS A FAMOUS WOMAN 

From a modest, retiring little mother one 
day, to the author of the world's best seller 
the next, from obscurity to fame almost over- 
night, — such was the experience of Mrs. 
Stowe, and it is no wonder that she was 
amazed at the position she had achieved un- 
sought. Such a modest disposition as hers 
could scarcely be other than amazed. She had 
looked for neither fame nor money. Her one 
object in writing "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was 
to open the eyes of the nation to the dreadful 
injustice of the system of slavery, to rouse 
the people to the menace it had become to the 
home life of our land. 

She knew slavery was wrong, and therefore 
she was its enemy. She recognized the fact 
that there were good masters as well as bad, 
and was willing even to concede that probably 
the good masters were in the majority, but as 
long as the system allowed families to be sepa- 

128 



HARRIET B. STOWE 129 

rated one from another and sold into different 
states, as long as there were no laws that would 
deal justice to the black as well as to the white, 
as long as marriage among the slaves was not 
regarded as sacred, as long as it was possible 
for a master to kill his slaves if he liked, with- 
out retribution in the courts of our country, 
Mrs. Stowe felt that the system was a curse 
to our land, and that Christian people ought 
to rise up and rid the nation of that blot on its 
fair name. 

But she was not a follower of William 
Lloyd Garrison. She did not believe it was 
necessary to disrupt the nation in order to free 
the country of this curse. She did not be- 
lieve in nor advocate the secession of the 
southern states. She was a staunch patriot in 
the deepest and best sense of the word. She 
thought slavery should be abolished, but really 
believed some peaceable settlement could be 
made between the North and the South. The 
idea that these two factions must go to war to 
settle their differences was farthest from her 
thoughts. Some action must be taken in order 
to free the slaves, but if Christian people could 
just be brought to see the injustice of the 



130 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

whole system, she knew that slavery was 
doomed. The fact that Christian people 
owned slaves themselves and saw no harm in 
it was what made it possible for slavery to 
continue to flourish in our land. 

But neither North nor South stopped to 
analyze her intentions. The North embraced 
her as an Abolitionist; the South repudiated 
her as an enemy. She was overwhelmed by an 
avalanche of criticism, both good and bad, that 
swept over her as soon as the nation had re- 
covered its breath after reading her story. To 
her, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a sermon di- 
rected against a great moral evil. She had 
not written it for the sake of the plot, she did 
not recognize its dramatic power, she had 
never once tried to give it a literary style. 
But she had written the truth as she saw it, 
and now indignant slaveholders denounced it 
as untrue. This was more than she could 
stand, so she promptly began to compile her 
"Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," which was to 
contain all the facts and documents on which 
the story was founded. 

Long before she began actual work on 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" itself, she had busied 



HARRIET B. STOWE 131 

herself in collecting authentic material, until 
she thought she had evidence enough to prove 
her statements, and yet it kept pouring in 
upon her from all sides while she wrote the 
many chapters, till she was shocked almost be- 
yond endurance at the evils she saw uncovered. 
Sometimes she was so overwhelmed by the 
dreadful tales that came to her ears, that it 
seemed as if she could not live to finish the 
book. But the thought of her mission that 
must be performed kept her up and gave her 
strength to write. She verified all the inci- 
dents she made use of, which she had not wit- 
nessed personally, and read reports of legal 
investigations. These sources of information 
she now proceeded to put into book form that 
the whole world might know where she had ob- 
tained her material and be convinced of the 
truth of the things she wrote. 

She made friends as well as enemies through 
this book, and it was balm to her hurt soul to 
think people wanted to see her because she was 
its author. While she was in New York aid- 
ing escaped slaves, she had the opportunity of 
hearing Jenny Lind, the famous singer; and 
her delight overshadowed everything else for 



132 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

the moment. Mr. Howard, publisher and 
friend of the Stowes, undertook to procure 
tickets for the performance, when he learned 
how much Mrs. Stowe wanted to hear the 
singer, but was told by Mr. Goldschmidt, 
Jenny Lind's husband, that the house was sold 
out. In expressing his regret at this bit of 
information, Mr. Howard chanced to mention 
the author's name. Instantly Mr. Gold- 
schmidt demanded to know if it could be the 
Mrs. Stowe who had written "Uncle Tom's 
Cabin," and immediately set about to get 
tickets regardless of the fact that the house 
was sold out. Taking his hat he left the 
theater, promising to be back directly with the 
necessary bits of pasteboard. Upon his re- 
turn he handed Mr. Howard an envelope con- 
taining two complimentary tickets for the best 
seats in the house, addressed to Mrs. Stowe in 
Jenny Lind's own handwriting. Mrs. Stowe 
never forgot this occasion, but writes that "the 
affair was a bewildering dream of sweetness 
and beauty." 

Four months after the publication of 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," Mrs. Stowe received 
her first check for ten thousand dollars, which 



HARRIET B. STOWE 133 

not only permitted her to do many things for 
home and family that she had never been able 
to do before, but also gave her an opportunity 
to go abroad, a thing she had long wished to 
do, in order that she might meet distinguished 
people who were in sympathy with the cause 
which she had taken up with a determination 
never to lay aside again until it was won. 

Many famous writers in England and 
France had written her, praising her book and 
expressing sympathy for the anti-slavery 
cause. Among these were George Eliot, 
George Sand, Madame Belloc, Lord Carlisle, 
Earl of Shaftesbury, Archbishop Whately 
and the Reverend Charles Kingsley. So it 
was with a feeling of joy that she received an 
invitation from the Anti-slavery Society of 
Glasgow to visit Scotland, for it would give 
her the opportunity of meeting the people she 
desired, and her royalties from her book made 
it possible to accept the invitation the spring 
of 1853. They were living at this time in 
Andover, Massachusetts, where Professor 
Stowe had been called to teach in the Andover 
Theological Seminary, and the Professor ac- 
companied her on her first trip abroad. 



134 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

So little heed had Mrs. Stowe paid to the 
fame that had crowned her literary efforts, 
that she was wholly unprepared for the recep- 
tion she met across the sea. The wharf was 
crowded with people eager to catch a glimpse 
of her when she landed at Liverpool, and 
everywhere she went she found the same 
crowds of enthusiastic admirers, waiting to do 
homage to the author of so great a book. She 
said it reminded her of the passage in the 
Bible, "What went ye out to see? A reed 
shaken with the wind?" And she was sure the 
people, after having once seen her, must have 
felt that God had indeed chosen the weak 
things of this world to do his great work. She 
has described herself as "a little bit of a 
woman, just as thin and dry as a pinch of 
snuff." She never had the least bit of con- 
ceit, for when her brother Edward wrote that 
he hoped her head would not be turned by the 
praises sung by the universe, she remarked 
that she saw no cause for being conceited, for 
she had not written "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
that God Himself was the author and she had 
but set down what he had told her. 

She had looked forward to her trip abroad 



HARRIET B. STOWE 135 

as a vacation, but found it crammed full of 
receptions in her own honor, and we find her 
wishing that she had two bodies so one might 
be resting while the other was keeping some 
of the many engagements that became part 
of her daily program all the while she was 
gone. The most notable of these receptions 
was one given her by the Duke and Duchess 
of Sutherland at Stafford House, in London. 
On this occasion Lord Shaftesbury read an ad- 
dress from the women of England to the 
women of America, urging them to abolish 
slavery from their shores. This was signed 
by 562,448 women of every rank in England, 
and it required twenty-six thick volumes to 
hold all the signatures. This set, beautifully 
bound in morocco, and packed in a solid oak 
case, was presented to Mrs. Stowe, with a 
recommendation from Lord Carlisle that she 
present it to the women of America in any 
way she saw fit. It was exhibited at the Bos- 
ton Anti-slavery Fair, and there still remains 
as a monument to the sentiment kindled by 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin." Mrs. Stowe was much 
impressed by this show of feeling from across 
the sea, but remembering that slavery was 



136 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

forced onto the American colonists in the face 
of their opposition, by the mother country, 
England, she thought the time was not yet 
ripe for a reply, and it was not until years 
later that her famous address to the women of 
England was written. 

While visiting England, she was presented 
with many beautiful gifts, to show the appre- 
ciation of the people for the work she was 
doing in America, to further the cause of the 
slave. In Scotland, a penny offering, amount- 
ing to a thousand gold sovereigns was pre- 
sented to her on a silver salver. Ireland gave 
her a bogwood casket, gold lined, and en- 
graved with the national emblems, containing 
a substantial offering for the cause of the 
slave. At Surrey Chapel in London, she was 
presented with a silver inkstand representing 
Religion, Bible in hand, giving liberty to the 
slave. Some school children gave her a gold 
pen, and the only speech she made in public 
was in accepting their gift. On all other occa- 
sions, the handsome, genial Professor had 
made her responses for her, and they were 
always well received. 

The most significant of all the gifts ten- 



HARRIET B. STOWE 137 

dered her was a bracelet presented at the 
Stafford House meeting in London. It was 
made of ten links and represented a slave's 
shackle. One of the links bore the inscrip- 
tion, "March 25, 1807/' the date slavery was 
abolished in England, and "August 1, 1834," 
the date it was abolished in the English colo- 
nies. The clasp bore the number "562,448," 
the number of signatures appended to the 
Earl of Shaftesbury's address. It was sug- 
gested that Mrs. Stowe have engraved on one 
of the other links the date of the abolition of 
slavery in the United States, but she expressed 
doubts as to her living long enough to witness 
that event. Had anyone prophesied at that 
time that slaves would be emancipated in 
America ten years later, she would have 
scouted the possibility, but she did live to see 
the day of the black man's freedom, and en- 
graved the date upon this bracelet with great 
satisfaction. 

It was a delight to Mrs. Stowe to visit the 
places she had read about in England and 
Scotland, and her one great grief was that 
her health would not permit her to visit all the 
historical places and see all the people she had 



138 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

wanted to. She made many lasting friend- 
ships during this visit with such people as the 
Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Byron, Ruskin, 
Dickens, George Eliot, and Macaulay, and 
during the winter that followed, she wrote two 
volumes called "Sunny Memories' ' which 
chronicle her experiences of that first brief 
tour. 

In 1856 Mrs. Stowe returned a second time 
to England. Her main object was to secure 
a copyright on a new book, "Dred," which had 
just appeared, but she also wished to take her 
daughters to France to study the language of 
that country. She enjoyed another very 
pleasant visit, renewing old friendships wher- 
ever she went and making new ones. She had 
the good fortune to meet Robert Browning 
and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning this 
time, which pleased her greatly, as she had 
missed seeing them on her previous tour. 
Queen Victoria gave her audience, also, and 
the Professor, describing this experience later, 
said they had "the pleasantest little interview 
that ever was" with her Majesty, and that she 
was a "nice little body, with exceedingly pleas- 
ant, agreeable manners." 



HARRIET B. STOWE 139 

The new book, "Dred," was a gigantic suc- 
cess. One hundred thousand copies were sold 
in four weeks ! This story, also, deals with the 
black man, and the author's aim was to show 
the bad effect slavery had upon our civiliza- 
tion, the demoralization of all classes of soci- 
ety from the wealthy, overbearing planter to 
the oppressed "po' white trash." The story 
was better written from a literary standpoint 
than "Uncle Tom's Cabin," but did not have 
the dramatic, soul-stirring pathos of the lat- 
ter, nor is it read as much in our day. 

Mrs. Stowe had placed her daughters in a 
Protestant school in Paris, and when she de- 
cided to return to her native land she left them 
there because they were making such good 
progress in their studies. She had scarcely 
reached home once more when she met with 
the most crushing blow of her life, in the loss 
of her eldest son, Henry, who was drowned 
July 9, 1857, while swimming in the Connecti- 
cut River near Dartmouth College, where he 
was a Freshman. There had been an excep- 
tionally strong bond of sympathy between 
this son and his mother, and it seemed for a 
time as if she could not bear the overwhelm- 



140 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

ing sorrow of his loss. Two days after the 
funeral Mrs. Stowe and the Professor went 
to Hanover and visited Dartmouth College. 
Henry's classmates took them around the 
campus, showed them the room where their 
son had spent so many hours while away from 
them, led them down through an enchanting 
glen to the beautiful river which he had loved 
so dearly and where he had lost his life, and 
let them watch the different boating crews at 
practice during the evening. The boat, Una, 
which had been Henry's, had its flag furled 
and tied with black crepe, in memory of the 
member gone from their midst, and his com- 
panions were so grief-stricken at his death 
that the mother heart felt strangely comforted. 
In the summer of 1859, the Stowes once 
more ventured to cross the ocean. This was 
the last trip abroad for any of them. The 
Professor and the youngest daughter, Georgi- 
ana, were Mrs. Stowe's companions this time, 
but after a few weeks of visiting their friends 
in England, father and daughter returned to 
America, leaving the mother to go on alone 
to France, where her twin daughters were still 
at school in Paris. They settled in Florence 



HARRIET B. STOWE 141 

for several months, then moved on to Rome. 
Here one day Mrs. Stowe went to visit the 
Castellani brothers, who were famous work- 
ers in gold; and while admiring the beautiful 
things the shop contained, she saw the head of 
an Egyptian slave carved in black onyx. It 
was marvelously done, and while Mrs. Stowe 
was silently studying it, one of the Castellani 
brothers told her he wanted her to accept it 
for her own, because of what she was doing 
for the slave in America, reminding her that 
they, too, were slaves in Italy. She accepted 
the gift, but when her friends looked for her 
to say some word of thanks, they found her 
in tears, so touched was she by the whole in- 
cident. 

This trip abroad was the longest one she 
made, for she was gone nearly a year and 
though she wanted to be with her loved ones 
at home, she was reluctant to leave old Eu- 
rope's shores. A happy climax to this happy 
visit was the voyage homeward. In those 
days it took a full fourteen days to cross the 
ocean, but the weather was beautiful all the 
way over, and for fellow voyagers she had the 
good fortune to have Mr. and Mrs. James T. 



142 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

Fields, and the Hawthornes. In such com- 
pany no one could be dull or bored and many 
pleasant hours were spent on deck telling 
stories to while away the time. So pleasant 
was the trip, in fact, that Hawthorne was 
heard to say, "Oh, I wish we might never get 
there." But all journeys come to an end some 
time, and this merry party reached homeland 
at length, glad to be once again in Amer- 
ica, Mrs. Stowe and her daughters went to 
Andover immediately, and very soon the busy 
pen was writing "Agnes of Sorrento," a story 
inspired by their sojourn in Florence. 






IX 

AS A PATRIOT 

Civil War was declared in April, 1861, and 
the whole nation was immediately plunged 
into mourning. No one thought it would be 
a long war, and many even declared that three 
months would see the end of it. The first 
volunteers enlisted for a period of three 
months, little dreaming that it would be four 
years before peace would again descend upon 
this fair land. 

Frederick Stowe responded to the first call 
for volunteers, contrary to the wishes of his 
family and friends. He was in college at the 
time, studying medicine under Oliver Wendell 
Holmes. Doctor Holmes wanted the boy to 
remain in school until he had completed his 
course, and then go to the front as a doctor, 
for good physicians were sorely needed by the 
Government. But Frederick rebelled against 
this plan, saying that he, a Stowe, would be 
ashamed not to go at once after the stand his 

143 



144 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

mother had taken in the cause of the slave. 
So reluctantly they let him go, and he joined 
Company A of the First Massachusetts Vol- 
unteers. 

He was in camp at Cambridge for a time, 
and while he was there his mother was 
called to Brooklyn on important business. 
She stayed at her brother Henry's house, and 
one day he came in with the announcement 
that the boat bearing the First Massachusetts 
Regiment had sailed for Jersey City, from 
which place the soldiers were to go by train 
to Washington. Mrs. Stowe and her sister- 
in-law promptly went down to Jersey City 
where they found the soldier boys dining in 
the great depot. After a time they succeeded 
in getting permission to go inside, and re- 
mained two hours with Frederick and his 
cousin Henry Beecher. In a letter home de- 
scribing her experience, Mrs. Stowe says she 
found her son strangely changed, for he had 
become a man over night, and all the other 
soldiers had grave faces beyond their years. 

Again in November of 1862, she saw this 
dear son, when by special invitation she had 
gone to Washington to attend a Thanksgiving 



HARRIET B. STOWE 145 

dinner provided for the crowds of fugitive 
slaves who had taken refuge in that city. He 
was now Lieutenant Stowe, having won his 
title by bravery on the battlefield, and his fam- 
ily was very proud of their soldier boy. He 
obtained leave of absence for a week, and his 
mother was allowed to be with him for that 
time. 

This Thanksgiving dinner for the slaves 
was a never-to-be-forgotten sight for Mrs. 
Stowe. There were hundreds of refugees 
who had sought protection within the Federal 
lines, and for some of them this dinner was the 
first decent meal they had had in their lives. 
Great tables groaned with food of all descrip- 
tions, and as fast as one crowd had been fed 
all they could eat, the tables were surrounded 
by another group of hungry negroes. One 
blind old slave, called among his followers 
"John the Baptist," prayed for humility 
among his people, lest they, in the gladness 
of their liberation, might forget the God who 
had saved them from the oppressor. Then the 
whole gathering sang that slave song, forbid- 
den by the South because of its power to rouse 
the black man to rebellion: 



146 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

"Oh, go down Moses, 
Way down in Egypt's land! 
Tell King Pharaoh 
To let my people go ! 
Stand away dere, 
Stand away dere, 
And let my people go!" 

Mrs. Stowe had another very important rea- 
son for going to Washington at this time, and 
that was to interview "Father Abraham" in 
person, and to ask him if the Emancipation 
Proclamation was to become a reality, for she 
did not wish to call the attention of the women 
in Europe to such an issue if it were to "fizzle 
out at the little end of the horn," as she was 
afraid it might do. She had no difficulty in 
obtaining an audience with the President, for 
the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Salmon P. 
Chase, had belonged to the Semi-colon Club 
in Cincinnati at the same time she had been a 
member, and was glad of the opportunity to 
present her to his Chief. Mrs. Stowe's son 
Charles and daughter Harriet went with her, 
and neither ever forgot this wonderful expe- 
rience. They were conducted through the 
East Room up the stairs to the President's 
private reception parlor. There was a bright 



HARRIET B. STOWE 147 

fire burning in the fireplace, and when the vis- 
itors entered the room, the President was sit- 
ting before it, warming his hands. He looked 
so bowed down and sad that the little party 
involuntarily drew back, fearful of intruding; 
but Mr. Chase led them forward and intro- 
duced Mrs. Stowe. 

The President rose quickly, and eagerly 
grasped her hand, exclaiming, "So you're the 
little woman who wrote the book that made 
this great war!" They had a pleasant hour 
together, sitting apart from the others in a 
convenient window seat; but of her inter- 
view, Mrs. Stowe never gave a full account. 
Perhaps it was confidential; but at any rate, 
Mrs. Stowe received the information she had 
come to get, and at last was able to write a 
reply to the address of the English women 
spoken nearly ten years before. Mr. Lincoln 
made it very clear to her that the emancipa- 
tion of the slaves was his goal, and though 
perhaps his words were not the same, he said 
in substance what he afterward repeated in his 
Second Inaugural Address, "If this struggle 
were to be prolonged till there was not a home 
in the land where there was not one dead, till 



148 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

all the treasure amassed by the unpaid labor 
of the slave should be wasted, till every drop 
of blood drawn by the lash should be atoned by 
blood drawn by the sword, we could only bow 
and say, 'Just and true are thy ways, thou 
King of saints!' " 

Mrs. Stowe told him of her hopes and fears, 
and how the task of writing "Uncle Tom's 
Cabin" had often bowed her down till she 
thought her health would fail her utterly be- 
fore she could finish the book; and he in turn 
confided to her that he did not think he would 
last long after the gigantic struggle to free 
the slaves had ended, because the issue meant 
so much to him that it was taking his very 
life blood, to watch the terrible conflict being 
waged between the two factions of his own 
beloved country. 

Like one in a trance Mrs. Stowe returned 
to her hotel after her interview with the Presi- 
dent, and that evening wrote most of her 
famous "Reply." Up to that moment she had 
not had a definite idea of what she should say 
to these English sisters, but now the way was 
clear, and she spoke very plainly indeed, re- 
counting the history of events in our country 



HARRIET B. STOWE 149 

up to the time of the Emancipation Proclama- 
tion, which was to take effect the following 
January. 

In part she replied thus: "In the begin- 
ning of the struggle, the voices that reached 
us across the water said, 'If we were only sure 
you were fighting for the abolition of slavery, 
we should not dare to say whither our sym- 
pathies for your cause might not carry us/ 
When these words reached us, we said, 'We 
can wait, our friends in England will soon 
see whither this conflict is tending/ A year 
and a half have passed, step after step has 
been taken for liberty; chain after chain has 
fallen, till the march of our armies is choked 
and clogged by the glad flocking of emanci- 
pated slaves; the day of final emancipation 
is set; the Border States begin to move in 
voluntary assent. Universal freedom for all 
dawns like the sun in the distant horizon, and 
still no voice from England. No voice? Yes, 
we have heard on the high seas the voice of 
a war-steamer, built for a man-stealing Con- 
federacy, with English gold, in an English 
dockyard, going out of an English harbor, 
manned by English sailors, with the full 



150 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

knowledge of English government officers, in 
defiance of the Queen's proclamation of neu- 
trality! So far has English sympathy over- 
flowed!" 

The Emancipation Proclamation was offi- 
cially issued on January 1, 1863. Mrs. Stowe 
was at a concert in the Music Hall of Boston 
when the announcement was made from the 
stage. The immense audience straightway 
went mad with joy, and during the ensuing 
excitement, someone discovered that Mrs. 
Stowe was sitting in the gallery. As soon 
as the information became generally known, 
the enthusiastic multitude leaped to their feet, 
cheered and called her name, waved their 
handkerchiefs and shouted, until she rose and 
bowed to the right and left, smiling her grati- 
fication and blushing furiously. It was the 
most triumphant moment of her life! 

During this very critical period of our coun- 
try's history, the Stowes moved from Andover 
to Hartford, Connecticut. Here, in a beau- 
tiful oak grove which she had loved as a girl, 
Mrs. Stowe built a house according to her own 
ideas of what she wanted, but without any 
thought of the practicability of it from an 



HARRIET B. STOWE 151 

architect's standpoint. She had often dreamed 
of doing this very thing as she walked and 
talked with Georgiana May and Catherine 
Cogswell years before, but she really had never 
expected to have money enough to make these 
dreams come true. However, the sale of "Un- 
cle Tom's Cabin" alone had brought her thou- 
sands of dollars, and with part of this she 
purchased the land on which to build. The 
place was finished in the natural wood cut from 
the oaks and chestnuts which grew in the grove, 
but it turned out to be a very costly venture, 
for the house was not practically arranged, 
nor suited at all to the rigors of a New Eng- 
land winter. Professor Stowe had opposed 
her plan from the start, and so she received 
little sympathy from him when her undertak- 
ing proved the failure he had predicted it' 
would be. 

Before the structure was finished, her daugh- 
ter Georgiana was married, earlier than she 
had planned, and the wedding had to take 
place in the half-completed house, so Mrs. 
Stowe found herself hurried and harried al- 
most to death trying to do everything at once. 
Naturally she found little time to write dur- 



152 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

ing such strenuous times, although it was 
mainly her stories that brought in the money 
necessary to keep this large, impractical es- 
tablishment going. Years had not taught the 
author nor the Professor how to handle money 
any more wisely than when they first began 
housekeeping. They were easily imposed 
upon, and responded so lavishly to all calls 
in the name of charity, and made so many un- 
fortunate business ventures that the thou- 
sands of dollars which Mrs. Stowe's writings 
brought her from time to time vanished as 
quickly as they came, and she never was a 
rich woman. When her publishers clamored 
for stories during these busy years, she replied, 
"Who could write on stories that had a son to 
send to battle, with Washington beleaguered, 
and the whole country shaken as with an earth- 
quake?" Yet she finished "Agnes of Sor- 
rento" and "The Pearl of Orr's Island" dur- 
ing the darkest hours of the war. 

Then came the battle of Gettysburg, the 
decisive battle of the war, and her son Fred- 
erick, now a captain, was among those 
wounded. Mrs. Stowe received a letter from 
his chaplain telling her that the lad was in 



HARRIET B. STOWE 153 

good hands, cheerful and quiet, but longing to 
see some of his family. At the same time, a 
similar letter reached Reverend Charles 
Beecher, of Georgetown, Massachusetts, con- 
cerning his son, Lieutenant Fred Beecher; 
so the two fathers started at once for the bat- 
tlefield. In a few days it was possible to 
bring the two wounded soldier boys back to 
their loved ones, where for weeks they strug- 
gled with life and death. Frederick Stowe had 
received a fragment of shell in his right ear, 
and though seriously wounded, he eventually 
recovered a measure of health. 



AS A FRIEND OF THE FREEDMAN 

At the close of the war, Captain Frederick 
Stowe resigned his commission in the Army 
and went back to college to finish his medical 
course. But he soon found this too great a 
strain mentally, for the wound he had received 
at Gettysburg never healed entirely and from 
time to time the pain in his head almost drove 
him insane. In that condition, constant ap- 
plication to his studies was an impossibility, 
and he came home much discouraged and de- 
pressed. His mother was in despair. What 
could she do with him? 

Then she heard of a movement among some 
Connecticut people, who were planning to 
take up an old cotton plantation in Florida 
and raise cotton by free labor. This appealed 
to Mrs. Stowe, for she saw not only an op- 
portunity to help Fred in such a move, but 
also a mission for herself among the freed 
blacks, and the finding of missions to perform 

154 



HARRIET B. STOWE 155 

was her aim in life. So she bought a cotton 
plantation on the beautiful St. Johns River, 
Florida, and set Fred to developing it, but of 
course the venture was a failure, for neither 
mother nor son knew the first thing about cot- 
ton raising, and it cost them more to grow 
the crop than they got for all they picked, 
mainly because mildew and army worms at- 
tacked the cotton plants, causing great havoc 
everywhere. Mrs. Stowe lost about ten thou- 
sand dollars in the experiment, but appar- 
ently had no regrets, for she felt that many 
negroes had been saved by her efforts, and 
human souls were worth more than money to 
her. 

Before they had made up their minds what 
to do next, Captain Stowe went on a fishing 
excursion and discovered Mandarin Cove just 
across the St. Johns River, with a beautiful 
orange grove that the owner was anxious to 
sell. Fred was greatly pleased with the idea 
of possessing an orange grove instead of a 
cotton plantation, and Mrs. Stowe promptly 
bought it for him. 

Mandarin Cove now became the winter 
home of the Stowe family, but they returned 



156 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

to their northern home for the summers until 
the Professor's failing health made it impos- 
sible for him to travel back and forth any 
longer. Mrs. Stowe was immensely interested 
in missionary work among the negroes of Flor- 
ida, for vast numbers of freed slaves had taken 
up their abode in this state where the mild 
climate suited them better than the colder re- 
gions of the country, and already unscrupu- 
lous people were beginning to exploit them. 
They were in a receptive mood and if good 
influences were not brought to bear upon them 
at once, bad influences would naturally tri- 
umph. So Mrs. Stowe conceived the idea of 
organizing a chain of churches up and down 
St. Johns River, and even wrote to influen- 
tial leaders of the Episcopal Church in regard 
to her plan, feeling that this particular branch 
of the Protestant church would reach the ne- 
groes best, because originally it was estab- 
lished to reach the poor working people of 
England before education was accessible for 
this class. 

She wrote to her brother, Charles Beecher, 
urging him to come to Florida, buy the orange 
grove next to hers, and establish an Episcopal 



HARRIET B. STOWE 157 

church for the colored people in that region, 
Mrs. Stowe had become a member of this 
church in 1864, but her brother preferred to 
remain a Congregational preacher, and 
though he did eventually go to Florida to 
live, it was not to Mandarin Cove. He set- 
tled at Newport, Florida, where he accom- 
plished a great work among the blacks, but 
for years the only preacher Mandarin Cove 
had was Professor Stowe, who lived there just 
during the winter months. The little church 
and schoolhouse where he preached was built 
with Mrs. Stowe's own money, and she taught 
a Sunday School class of colored children. 
Unfortunately, this little structure burned 
down one windy night, and Mrs. Stowe was 
grief-stricken at the loss ; but nothing daunted, 
she began to plan for a new building just as 
soon as sufficient funds could be raised for 
that purpose. However, it was not until 1884 
that she succeeded in establishing an Episcopal 
church at Mandarin. 

Mandarin Cove became very dear to the 
Stowes through the many years they wintered 
there. Not a nook along the beautiful river, 
not a spot in the dense pine woods which sur- 



158 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

rounded them that they did not explore. They 
had a rude, two-wheeled cart, drawn by a mule 
called Fly, which Mrs. Stowe said looked like 
an animated hair trunk, and with this equipage 
they traveled about the country making friends 
and enjoying the bracing air, and not caring 
a particle how queer they must have looked 
at times. 

Not far from the Stowes' modest little 
house there was a tiny Roman Catholic 
church, in charge of an Italian priest, Father 
Batazzi, and a nunnery where lived three 
French sisters of the faith. They were all 
very poor, and Mrs. Stowe and her Rabbi, as 
she always called her Professor, made it a 
practice to visit them every two or three weeks 
with baskets of oranges and other delicacies. 
Creed made no difference to these simple- 
hearted folk. 

Some enterprising steamboat company in 
Jacksonville organized excursions to Mandarin 
Cove for the purpose of carrying curious peo- 
ple to visit Mrs. Stowe's orange grove, but 
without her knowledge or consent, and with- 
out any remuneration for the trouble the 
Stowes were put to when such parties overran 



HARRIET B. STOWE 159 

their property. The Professor and his wife 
took it as a joke, and treated all such visitors 
very courteously and hospitably as long as they 
conducted themselves properly, but the hot- 
tempered Professor could not bear to see 
souvenir-hunters hack up his orange trees; 
and on one occasion he rebuked a man who 
ruthlessly broke off a fruit-laden branch with- 
out asking permission of anyone. 

The trespasser exclaimed in astonishment, 
"Why, I thought this was Mrs. Stowe's place!" 

"I would have you understand, sir, that I 
am the proprietor and protector both of Mrs. 
Stowe and this place!" the irate Professor 
replied. 

He was very proud of his wife's fame, but it 
galled him considerably to be so completely 
overshadowed by her greatness, for after all, 
he had some claims to fame himself, being so 
learned a scholar, and the author of a book on 
the Bible which brought him ten thousand dol- 
lars or more. Once when he was introduced 
to a woman, she remarked, "I am very glad 
to meet you, Professor Stowe, but I must ad- 
mit, I would rather have met Mrs. Stowe." 

"So had I, madam," he grimly retorted. 



160 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

As the Professor grew in years, and his hair 
turned white as snow, his health gradually 
failed until at length he found it impossible 
to make the long journeys back and forth be- 
tween his old New England home and the 
Mandarin Cove cottage, and because all the 
friends and relatives whom they loved the 
most lived in the North, they decided at length 
to return to Florida no more. The frosts had 
destroyed their orange grove, and so when the 
property was sold it brought them next to 
nothing, in spite of the vast sums of money 
they had spent in improving it. Here was an- 
other business venture which had failed be- 
cause neither master nor mistress knew how to 
handle their income practically. 

Now the Hartford house which Mrs. 
Stowe had built with so much pleasure also 
proved to be too great a burden on her, and 
already the industrial district of the city had 
nearly hemmed them in, so that place, too, was 
disposed of, and a smaller, more practical es- 
tablishment purchased in town, where the fam- 
ily resided until after both the Professor and 
his beloved wife had gone on to the Home- 
land across the River Jordan. 






XI 

AS A WRITER OF NEW ENGLAND STORIES 

Mrs. Stowe's best literary efforts are with- 
out doubt her New England stories, although 
her two books dealing with the slavery ques- 
tion won her the great reputation she still 
bears, and always will bear. "Uncle Tom's 
Cabin" and "Dred" were written about a 
subject very dear to her heart, but the char- 
acters she depicts were not, as a rule, personal 
acquaintances. She had to rely upon the im- ■ 
pressions of others for these studies, and it 
is really wonderful how true to life these pic- 
tures are. There was no opportunity for her 
to travel through the South to familiarize her- 
self with scenes and settings for her tales; 
there was no opportunity for her to mingle 
with the slave traders in their daily lives; and 
yet she was able to picture human nature so 
faithfully that very little criticism was offered 
as to faults in location or description of south- 
ern life. 

If she could write such gripping stories 

161 



162 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

of people with whom she had not come in 
personal contact, such as Legree, Augustine 
St. Clair, and other slaveholders, how much 
better able she was to write stories of people 
whom she met in her daily life, and she cer- 
tainly knew New England people, having lived 
among them most of her life. Indeed, we can 
scarcely think of anyone better fitted to pre- 
serve for us the scenes and characters of the 
day in which she lived. 

Her first successful story was a New Eng- 
land character sketch, called "Uncle Lot." 
Her first New England novel was "The Min- 
ister's Wooing." This story, as well as "The 
Pearl of Orr's Island," she began in 1857, 
the summer her eldest son was drowned; and 
in it we find her own bitter sufferings vividly 
pictured in the experience of Mrs. Marvyn in 
the death of her son at sea. Mrs. Stowe began 
"The Pearl of Orr's Island" first, but the 
scene of this is laid in Maine, where she had 
spent two of the happiest years of her life 
with her children, and she was so forcibly 
reminded of the loss of her boy, Henry, when- 
ever she tried to write about those days that 
at length she laid aside that book for other in- 



HARRIET B. STOWE 163 

terests until the bitterness of her own sorrow 
should be softened by time and resignation. 

Had she been able to finish it at once, 
there is little doubt but that it would have 
been her masterpiece, for the first chapters 
gave that promise. But she laid it by first 
to compile her "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" 
and while she was writing "Dred"; then again 
in order to push "The Minister's Wooing" 
to a finish, and two years elapsed before she 
turned to it once more. "The Minister's Woo- 
ing" suited her mood at the time, being a tale 
of great sorrow and suffering, and into it she 
poured the accumulated sadness of her own 
bleeding heart. This book was for the most 
part dictated, and went forward very rapidly. 

She did her best work when she had an audi- 
ence to listen to the various chapters as fast 
as they were completed, and while she was in 
the midst of any important work, her family 
hovered close in the background, ready to be 
called at a moment's notice to criticize and sug- 
gest improvement in the tale. If the Pro- 
fessor took exception to any argument she 
had propounded, or if she had not been mi- 
nutely accurate in some local description or 



164 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

character, he promptly pointed out the short- 
comings, and Mrs. Stowe as promptly cor- 
rected the passage. Her twin daughters 
passed judgment on all the love-making 
scenes, and usually their mother was as quick 
to heed their advice as that of their father. 
Typewriters were unheard of in that day, and 
all her manuscripts were laboriously written 
out in long hand, but she was a rapid writer, 
and prided herself on the fact that she seldom 
found it necessary to revise or copy. Happy 
author ! 

Into "The Minister's Wooing" Mrs. Stowe 
has woven the story of her sister Catherine's 
romance, the loss of her lover in a storm at 
sea, and the doubts that drove her almost fran- 
tic because she did not know whether or not 
he was a Christian. Her heroine, Mary Scud- 
der, is betrothed to a wild young sailor boy, 
who does not understand the spiritual nature 
of his sweetheart, but holds a deep reverence 
for her in his heart. His ship is reported lost 
at sea, and of course he is supposed to have 
gone down with it. The minister, believing 
the lover is dead, courts the maiden, and finally 
she consents to marry him, though she does 



HARRIET B. STOWE 165 

not feel the love for him that she had for her 
wild sailor boy. Before they are married, 
however, the sailor returns to his home, ex- 
pecting to claim his bride. Here the minister 
shows his unselfish devotion to the girl as well 
as the greatness of his soul by giving up his 
claim on her, whom he loved dearer than life 
itself, and thereby winning the wayward sailor 
to a better life. 

Two years later when she again took up 
the thread of "The Pearl of Orr's Island," 
she had begun another novel, called " Agnes of 
Sorrento," dealing with her travels in Italy. 
She seemed to take keen delight in writing of 
the life in this sunny, picturesque land, but 
remarks in one of her letters that it makes 
her shiver to work on her Maine story, and 
so, through these many delays, this book loses 
much of the power it started out with, although 
Whittier has called it the most charming New 
England idyl ever written. 

"Oldtown Folks" was her next great at- 
tempt at picturing New England life. This 
was published in 1869, and Mrs. Stowe called 
it her "resume of the whole spirit and body 
of New England." She explained that she 



166 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

tried to make her mind as still as a looking- 
glass, and then to put into words the images 
she saw reflected there. In this book, she has 
attempted the difficult task of depicting char- 
acters that her husband knew and described 
to her. Oldtown is South Natick, Massachu- 
setts, where Professor Stowe lived as a boy, 
and several times while the tale was in prog- 
ress, he took his wife to visit this town in order 
that she might get the scenery while he re- 
called childhood memories and incidents. 

In 1877 "Poganuc People" appeared, the 
last serial Mrs. Stowe undertook. She had 
not intended to write another book, but began 
this as a Christmas brochure, and it kept grow- 
ing as she wrote, until it became book size. 
It is a companion story to '"Oldtown Folks," 
in that it deals with her recollections of her 
own childhood, instead of her husband's, and 
is, in fact, her autobiography. She has de- 
scribed in it the old parsonage with its many 
garrets and cellars, the woods and lakes, the 
brothers and sisters, her father and mother. 
The "Dolly" of "Poganuc People" is Harriet 
Beecher herself. 



XII 

AS A FRIEND 

Mrs, Stowe was a little woman physically, 
very quick in all her movements, but so re- 
tiring in disposition that Mrs. Browning said 
of her, after meeting her at a reception, "Never 
did lioness roar so softly." She, like the other 
members of the Beecher family, possessed a 
keen sense of humor, which was a delight to 
all who knew her, an element which makes her 
books so readable. This quality of seeing the 
funny side of things helped her over many 
a difficult place and made her an ideal wife, 
mother, teacher and friend. She was not the 
kind of person who made friends readily, and 
as readily forgot them. Her life was rich in 
real, abiding friendships with people in al- 
most every walk in life. 

One of the most striking of these friend- 
ships was that existing between her and her 
schoolmate, Georgiana May. From the time 
these two went to school together at the Hart- 

167 



168 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

ford Female Seminary, they never lost sight 
of each other. During the long years that 
they lived in different parts of the country, 
they wrote long, interesting, intimate letters 
to each other, telling of their personal plans 
and problems and recounting life's adven- 
tures, for both of them married and had dif- 
ferent problems to meet in their own little 
worlds. 

Between her and her own brother, Henry 
Ward Beecher, there existed one of the most 
precious friendships that has ever been re- 
corded. We read of David and Jonathan, 
of Damon and Pythias, but of Harriet and 
Henry fully as much could be said, although 
they were brother and sister. They loved 
each other as devotedly as these friends of 
history, and bore each other's griefs as if the 
hurt were personal. When Mrs. Stowe suf- 
fered so keenly the thrusts of poison tongues 
after the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
this brother was a great comfort to her. In 
later years, when mean-spirited men sought 
to belittle Henry Ward Beecher, who had 
become a world famous preacher in the mean- 
time, by his brave and courageous stand 



HARRIET B. STOWE 169 

against wrong in any form, this sister's un- 
swerving faith in him helped him through his 
humiliating experience, and when he was com- 
pletely vindicated of the charges brought 
against him, her joy was an added zest to the 
victory. 

While abroad she made many friends of 
note, who remained her friends from that time 
on. With the Duchess of Sutherland she cor- 
responded for years, and with Lady Byron 
also. A very deep bond of sympathy existed 
between her and the gentle, misjudged wife of 
Lord Byron, which made Mrs. Stowe, at the 
very pinnacle of her fame, willing to sacrifice 
her reputation, everything, in order to clear 
Lady Byron's name of slanderous charges. 

John Ruskin and Mrs. Browning counted 
her as one of their dearest friends after they 
met her in her travels in England. Her let- 
ters to these illustrious writers have never been 
found, but we can judge of their contents by 
the interesting answers she received from 
them. 

Nor were these the only children of genius 
who sought out this wonderful woman and 
called her friend. George Eliot, foremost 



170 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

woman writer in England at that time, and 
George Sand, brilliant French authoress of 
the same period, wrote her freely and fre- 
quently, criticizing her literary works with 
sincere praise, for both seemed to admire their 
American sister greatly, and to realize what 
she was accomplishing in the field of litera- 
ture. Strangely enough, these three women 
are saidr to have resembled each other to a 
marked degree in characteristics, although not 
in physical likeness. When lost in thought, 
there was a peculiar heaviness to their fea- 
tures, a lack-luster of eye that made their faces 
very plain and expressionless like stone masks. 
But when animated, their faces lighted up, 
their eyes sparkled, and they looked like dif- 
ferent persons. Possibly this accounts for 
the great difference that exists in all the pho- 
tographs these women had taken of themselves. 
Certainly there is a wide range of expression 
in those of Mrs. Stowe which are still pre- 
served for posterity. 

While she was abroad she discovered some 
pictures of herself supposed to be good like- 
nesses, that astonished her, and she wrote 
home that she was making a collection of 



HARRIET B. STOWE 171 

them for her family to put in the museum as 
curiosities. The Richmond portrait of her is 
a much better likeness than any of the photo- 
graphs, because it has caught her best expres- 
sion. The marble bust by Miss Durant is also 
a good likeness, for this famous sculpturess 
was also able to catch and preserve the sweet- 
ness and strength of the animated countenance. 
This bust was given to the University of New 
York and can still be seen there. It differs 
from most of her pictures in the method of 
hair-dressing. She usually wore her hair 
parted in the middle with five or six long 
smooth curls hanging at either side of her face, 
and bound down by a narrow velvet band; 
but Miss Durant has pictured her with it 
drawn back into a knot low in her neck. 

She was a pleasant person to meet, being 
always self-possessed, and considerate of 
others, a gentle, rather old-fashioned little 
woman, who showed by her very manner that 
she was a born gentlewoman, though not a 
society lady. Mrs. Fields recalls in her "Life 
and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe," a 
reception she once attended with Mrs. Stowe 
when the hostess drew Mrs. Fields aside and 



172 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

asked in surprise why she had never been told 
that Mrs. Stowe was beautiful. 

"Indeed when I observed her," says Mrs. 
Fields, "in the full ardor of conversation, 
with her heightened color, her eyes shining 
and awake but filled with great softness, her 
abundant curling hair rippling naturally 
about her head and falling a little at the sides, 
I quite agreed with my hostess. Nor was that 
the first time her beauty had been revealed to 
me; but she was seldom seen to be beautiful 
by the great world, and the pleasure of this 
recognition was very great to those who loved 
her." 

She was inclined to be absent-minded even 
in her youth, and this habit grew on her with 
the years. Often while entertaining friends, 
or being entertained by them, she would sud- 
denly lose herself in some train of thought, 
brought up, possibly by a chance remark of 
guest or hostess, and would take no further 
part in the conversation going on about her. 
Sometimes she would wander away from the 
rest of the guests at a reception, and perhaps 
be found admiring the flowers in the conserva- 
tory, or calmly watching the scene from some 



HARRIET B. STOWE 173 

hidden nook, while her thoughts were far 
afield. 

On one occasion, when at the very height 
of her fame, she was invited to dine at the 
Quincy house. Her hostess showed her to an 
upper room that she might refresh herself 
after her journey, before she was presented to 
the other guests, and she was left alone. Pres- 
ently the family below began to wonder what 
was delaying her so long, and as the minutes 
passed they grew impatient, then alarmed. 
When dinner was announced and Mrs. Stowe 
had failed to appear, her hostess hurried to her 
room to discover if she were ill, for she had 
not answered when a servant had knocked on 
her door to inquire for her welfare. When 
the door was opened by the anxious hostess, 
there stood Mrs. Stowe in front of a bookcase, 
with her bonnet and shawl still on, reading a 
volume she had taken from the shelves. It 
was a copy of "Sir Charles Grandison," a book 
she had read as a child, and the finding of it 
there had so taken her attention that she had 
completely forgotten where she was and what 
social etiquette demanded of her as a guest. 
But she was so contrite over her failings, and 



174 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

so lovable that no one could help forgiving her, 
not even her publishers when she disappointed 
them in getting a serial instalment ready for 
a set date. 

James Russell Lowell, as editor of the 
Atlantic Monthly, became personally ac- 
quainted with Mrs. Stowe, and had only the 
highest praise to speak of her. Other noted 
Americans whom she numbered among her 
friends were Oliver Wendell Holmes, Nathan- 
iel Hawthorne, James T. Fields, John Green- 
leaf Whittier and John T. Howard. Of 
course there were hosts of others more or less 
well known in public life, and who can count 
those whose names are unknown in the annals 
of history, who knew this great-hearted 
woman as a true and tender friend? 

Let us not forget the black man in this list- 
ing of Mrs. Stowe's friends, for in a large 
measure he owes his freedom to the compassion 
of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and 
after all, it is not the greatness of one's friends 
that counts ; it is their sincerity, and surely no 
one could love Harriet Beecher Stowe any 
more sincerely than the humble slave for whom 
she fought all her life. 



XIII 

AS THE SUN SET 

In 1872, driven by the need of funds, Mrs. 
Stowe accepted a proposal from the American 
Literary Bureau of Boston to deliver a course 
of forty readings from her own books in the 
larger cities of New England. The offer was 
liberal, it appealed to her from more than one 
standpoint, and she accepted with the under- 
standing that the readings be completed be- 
fore December, so she could join her family 
in Florida. Even this made her a month late 
in her southern home, and the Professor, who 
loved her so devotedly and grew more and 
more dependent upon her as the years flew by, 
felt much aggrieved at her protracted ab- 
sence. He wrote such dismal letters, threat- 
ening to die of homesickness if she did not 
come home at once, that it worried her not a 
little, but she replied in her humorous vein, 
begging him to wait a little longer so they 
could have another quiet evening together be- 

175 



176 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

fore he left her, and trying in this way to cheer 
him up till she could be with him again. 

Traveling in those days was not as easy nor 
as comfortable as it is in our time, nor were 
the hotels as complete and well managed, but 
on the whole Mrs. Stowe enjoyed this expe- 
rience of riding about the country and reading 
to the public from her own compositions, and 
the public certainly enjoyed her. In one of 
her audiences was a stone-deaf woman who 
made it a point to see her after the program 
was over, just to tell her that she came merely 
to look into Mrs. Stowe's face, for she would 
rather see her than the Queen of England. 
Another time, Mrs. Stowe met a woman who 
had named her two daughters Harriet Beecher 
and Eva, a compliment that seemed to please 
the modest little author very much. Several 
times she met old friends of bygone years and 
renewed friendships with people she had well- 
nigh forgotten in the stress of her hurried, 
busy life. But she did not make any more 
tours as a public reader, once this course was 
done, although she often appeared in churches 
or private homes for the benefit of various 
charities. 



HARRIET B. STOWE 177 

Her last public appearance was in June, 
1882, when she was seventy-one years of age. 
Her Boston publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & 
Co., gave a reception for her at the home of 
ex-Governor Claflin, at Newtonville, Massa- 
chusetts, and the gathering was notable for the 
number of famous literary people present. 
Among these were Holmes, Whittier, Aldrich, 
Trowbridge, Mrs. J. T. Fields, Mrs. A. D. T. 
Whitney, Louise Chandler Moulton, Lucy 
Larcom, Bronson Alcott, Elizabeth Stewart 
Phelps, and Julia Dorr. The Stowe and 
Beecher families were well represented also, 
as three brothers, one sister, a son and a daugh- 
ter were able to attend. 

When the guests had all had opportunity to 
pay their respects to the guest of honor, Mr. 
H. O. Houghton addressed this unique assem- 
bly of celebrities, stating that the occasion of 
the gathering was the birthday of one whose 
years, if they were measured by the amount 
of work she had accomplished, would place her 
with the antediluvians, but if measured by the 
freshness of her stories and her sympathy with 
youth, would indicate that she must have found 
the fount of perpetual youth herself. He gave 



178 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

a brief sketch of her life, calling attention to 
the fact that her unusual training and intense 
way of living had naturally fitted her for the 
important part she was to play in the field of 
literature and in the history of her country. 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin/' in his opinion, was the 
greatest epic of that period, and would for 
centuries be the "Iliad" and "iEneid" of 
American literature. He spoke of how it had 
been read by every class of people on the globe, 
from the poorest of men who could scarcely 
read or write, to crowned heads of great lands, 
saying that while her New England stories 
were sufficient to give any author an enviable 
reputation, in his mind, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 
outranked them all. 

Henry Ward Beecher, in his happy way, 
responded to this address of welcome by a 
wonderful homily on "Our Mother," in which 
he said that Harriet was most like her own 
mother in characteristics and sympathies, 
though possibly not in physical likeness. Ed- 
ward Beecher also addressed the assembly, re- 
lating how favorably his sister's writings had 
effected the woman's suffrage movement in 
this country. 



HARRIET B. STOWE 179 

These speeches were followed by poems in 
Mrs. Stowe's honor, written by Whittier, 
Holmes, and other celebrities. One by her 
own daughter, Georgiana Allen, is particu- 
larly noteworthy: 

"A child came down to earth 

Just seventy years ago, 
And round its form the angels trod, 

Whispering low, 

' 'Tis an instrument 
To be played by the hand of God.' 

"Though the instrument's feebler grown, 
'Twill sound loud and full until death, 

Like the harp with its strings JEolian-blown, 
Rising and falling, 
Whispering and calling, 

With the strength of God's own breath." 

Then Mrs. Stowe herself rose to speak, and 
the whole assembly came to their feet and re- 
mained standing while she said her thanks in 
her quiet, modest way, urging all her friends 
to trust in God, remembering the great things 
He had brought to pass, and particularly that 
the scourge of slavery had been driven from 
our fair land. Then followed an eloquent plea 
for the black man, slave no longer, but piti- 



180 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

fully ignorant and full of faults which the 
white man was inclined to be intolerant of, 
now that he had his freedom. So we find her 
still laboring for the cause of this down-trod- 
den people as long as mind and strength en- 
dured, a faithful servant in the sight of God. 

During the year that followed, Mrs. Stowe 
put her letters and papers in order, and wrote 
her son Charles of what she had done. It 
seemed to gratify her to find that through all 
the letters she herself had written, there was 
one theme running from the time she was thir- 
teen years old, and that was "the intense, un- 
wavering sense of Christ's educating, guiding 
presence and care," as she expressed it. She 
named over the friends and relatives who had 
gone on before her to the spirit land — her girl- 
hood friend, Georgiana May, her three sons, 
her brother George and sister Catherine, her 
father and her mother — and she seemed to feel 
that she herself was very near the border. 
But as a matter of fact, she lived many years 
longer, though the splendid mind became that 
of a little child once more, and the last years 
of her life were like a fading sunset, as some- 
one has so aptly described it. 



HARRIET B. STOWE 181 

Professor Stowe was afflicted with an incur- 
able disease during his old age, and for several 
years was a helpless invalid, over whom his 
devoted wife hovered with tender solicitude and 
yearning heart. He loved her with all the 
strength of his great soul, and as he grew 
weaker he clung to her more and more, as a 
child clings to its mother in its helplessness. 
This taxed her physical strength to the utter- 
most, but she would not permit anyone else 
to nurse him as long as she could keep it up 
herself ; so trained help was called in only when 
he was far spent and she was well-nigh ex- 
hausted. His death came August 6, 1886. 
The setting sun filled the room with its golden 
glory when he suddenly opened his eyes, and 
gazing off toward the distant, cloud-hung hills, 
he whispered, "Peace with God! Peace with 
God!" His eyes closed again, and he drifted 
off into eternal sleep. Within a year he was 
followed by Henry Ward Beecher, and the 
youngest daughter, Georgiana. What depths 
of sorrow that mother heart plumbed during 
her long, illustrious life! 

With so many of her best beloved gone on 
before, it was only natural that from this time 



182 FAMOUS AMERICANS 

on, Mrs. Stowe's thoughts turned more and 
more to things spiritual, and the last real let- 
ter she ever wrote, sent to her friend, Mrs. 
Howard, says in part, "My sun has set. The 
time of work for me is over. I have written 
all my words, and thought all my thoughts, 
and now I rest me in the flickering light of 
the dying embers, in a rest so profound that 
the voice of an old friend arouses me but mo- 
mentarily, and I drop back again into repose." 
Like her father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, she 
had lived so intensely that the fires of her 
mind seemed to have burned out long before 
her body was released from earthly bondage, 
and though she realized her condition, she ut- 
tered no complaint. Her children cared for 
her tenderly until she slipped away July 1, 
1896, after eighty-five years of loving and 
living. She was laid to rest beside her hus- 
band and children in the cemetery at Andover, 
while her friends gathered about the grave and 
sang the old hymns which had never failed to 
soothe her to the last. What more fitting 
close to such a sweet and beautiful life! 



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